Until We Meet Again
by Grand Phoenix
Summary: The ghosts of the past hold the answers to the future. When Usagi is put into a coma, Rei, Mamoru, and the Sailor Senshi take it upon themselves to find out what caused it with help from a stranger. Their journey will take them to the depths of darkness.
1. Beautiful Dreamer

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

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**1.  
Beautiful Dreamer **

The night was broken by the slap of footsteps.

_Help me, Usagi!_

She pushed harder, faster, as fast as her legs could carry her. They helped her cross the street and onto the sidewalk, propelled her with the strength of stallions free as the wind.

_Please help me!_

She ducked and weaved past a stream of night-owls, muttering rushed apologies and excuses. Tearing up the concrete, a white and orange sawhorse barricade blocking an open manhole loomed forward. With the finesse of an Olympic athlete she grabbed the top bar, vaulted the obstruction, and hit the ground running without pause.

_This way, Usagi! Keep going this way!_

She panted, chest heaving up and down, down and up, white smoke billowing from dry, chapped lips. Sweat beaded in the thickets of her brow, coated her cheeks and neck in a shiny diamond film. She closed her mouth, breathed hotly through flared nostrils.

Keep going.

Keep _going_.

_Through the bushes! The bushes, Usagi!_

She dove sharply to her right, fought her way past a tangled net of branches and bumpy rocks. She emerged on the other side and ran stumblingly down a steep hill.

_Hurry, Usagi!_

Faster. _Faster_. Don't stop for anything. Don't _stop_.

_Hurry!_

The stairs! Go for the stairs, Usagi! Don't forget the stairs!

Her eyes squinted through the sweat, limbs transforming to rock and steel.

She clenched her throat, braced her weight against the edge of the step, and soared!

_USAGI…._

She landed on the next step and leaped again, arms spread out for balance.

_Usagi…._

She hit the bottom of the stairs, tripped, and crashed to the ground. Dirt and gravel spilled from outstretched fingers.

_Usagi…._

Like an echo, a tide teasing the foundations of a beach, retreating to the folds of the sea; a drop of water falling upon a still surface, perturbing the natural balance with a rippling epicenter.

Usagi groaned and opened her eyes. She searched her surroundings. Swing-sets. A see-saw. A jungle gym. A red, rusted roundabout. She was in one of Azabu-Juuban's local parks.

She got to her knees, one leg at a time, and slowly stood up. She brushed off her pants and jacket, studied the entrenched darkness. Her heart still hammered, lungs still burning. "Where are you?" she called.

_I'm…I'm over here._ Tired, dazed, a breeze in the tunnels of an enormous cavern.

"Where's here?"

_By the slide. Come to the streetlight._

Usagi moved. The soles of her feet scraped scattered woodchips and dirtied pebbles, resounded like mallet strikes in emptiness. Candy wrappers fluttered along cracks in the pavement, nestled on a bed of trimmed green grass. A swing rocked on its chains stirred by the wind – _creeeeak, creeeeak, creeeeak_.

"Are you okay?" Usagi asked. "Are you hurt? What happened?"

_I…I don't know. Everything's a blur. I think I might have sprained my ankle._

"Are you sure you don't want me to call an ambulance?"

_NO! No…it's not serious. I'm fine._

"What about the police?"

_M-Maybe. I don't know. I don't trust them._ Quavering, hesitant:_ They scare me._

"They won't hurt you. They'll do everything they can to protect you and catch your attacker."

_I know. I know. Just…not yet. Don't call them yet, okay? I'm still a little shaken up…._

"That's fine," Usagi said gently. "We can take as much time as you want."

_Th-Thank you. You're too kind. _

She approached the slide, an old, twisting metal snake. Her hand grazed the crest of the curve, slithered through wetness gleaming in blinding halogen. It had drizzled earlier, when she heard the voice in her head cry for her.

She stopped under the spherical halo, peered at the bushes circling the area. "I've gone past the slide. Where are you?"

_Over here. Do you see that big tree? The really, really tall one?_

Usagi looked up and noticed it right away, the weeping willow with its droopy limbs and tear-shaped leaves. "Yes. I see it."

___Come forward, Usagi. Go straight to this tree._

Usagi did. She paused in front of it, put a hand to its peeling grey trunk. "Okay, I'm here."

_Good…that's good. _So happy, safe, relieved._I can see you, Usagi. __I can see you just fine._

"But I can't see you," said Usagi, peering around the tree. "It's too dark. Can you give me some sort of sign? Something that'll let me know you're there?"

_Here._ A small, pale hand emerged from the shadows, palm upturned, beckoning. _Take my hand, Usagi. Please. Help me up._

Usagi smiled. "I can see you now." She glided past the tree, waded through the shrubs. She could just make out the shape of a young girl in what little light filtered through the leaves. "There you are. Oh thank goodness, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," said the girl. "Really, I am. Never better."

"It's alright. You don't have to sugarcoat it. I'm here for you. You have nothing to fear."

"Are you sure?"

"Very sure." Usagi stepped into the light, got a good look at the girl. Poor thing, she looked so scared, as if a nightmarish creature was waiting just around the corner. "Come on; let's get you back on your feet." She reached out for the girl's hand and took it. "Your parents must be very worried—"

_Click._

A sense of cold, damp darkness.

A slice of crescent white teeth dipped in thick, drooling amber.

"Oh but my friend, that's where you're wrong. The only person who should be worried is _you."_

Haha.

Ahahahaha.

AHAHAHAHAHA!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…!

Usagi squeezed the girl's wrist. "W-Wait—"

There was a sound of thunder, a flash of lightning.

No one heard her scream.

* * *

A few minutes later, Azabu-Juuban was alive with the howls of sirens. An ambulance, a fire truck, and a trio of police cars tore through the streets, firework bursts of red and blue and white tossing epileptic shadows from mounted light bars. Windshield wipers roamed constantly, casting aside sheets of pouring rain.

As they approached, their headlights fell upon a body stretched out along the sidewalk. Long blonde hair spread over her like angel wings, hands clasped together at the swell of her breasts.

If the paramedics didn't know any better, they would have assumed she was asleep.

And they were right.

Tsukino Usagi was in a deep, deep sleep, one that medicine and modern technology would not be able to wake her from.


	2. DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY

**Disclaimer: **All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

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**Until We Meet Again…**

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**2.  
****DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY**

**August 25, 2013**

The traffic was surprisingly light at this hour of the morning. Perhaps it was made so by the Powers Above, providing her fast and open leeway into downtown Azabu Juuban, but not too fast. If she hadn't noticed the black-and-whites tucked in the shade of the red maples as she drove by the Hikawa Jinja or the hulk of the Suzuki Jimmy hidden in the alley she left behind, she wouldn't have hesitated for a second to stomp on the accelerator and break the godsdamned speed limit.

Hino Rei couldn't wait any longer, but she had to abide by the rules of the road. It wouldn't do to worry the others if she got issued a ticket, or worse, resisted an officer's orders, struck said officer between the eyes so she could be on her way, then get slammed up against the hood of the car and have her wrists cuffed and hauled off to the slammer where she'd stay until one of the girls or Mamoru bailed her out. They didn't need another problem.

…Neither would Usagi.

She pressed her lips together, gripped the steering wheel tighter.

She pulled the Subaru Legacy into the parking lot shortly thereafter. She gathered her purse, hopped out, and locked the doors.

She walked the distance toward the entrance. The pavement was damp with dew, exuding the musk of cool crisp air and earthy rot. Water droplets bedded in the fold of leaves; made a daring dive from the tip and jackknifed into soil where they were absorbed by invasive roots. The sun fought through the gloomy overcast, spilling scant rays indiscriminately, brightened her world by tints and shades. It brought her little cheer.

She pulled the jacket collar up, rubbed and blew air on her hands. She reached the revolving doors, followed her grim reflection, and entered.

A wave of warmth engulfed her, burning with sweet, aching numbness. Praise the Gods; it was a welcome change compared to being out in unseasonably cool weather.

The lobby was wide and spacious, spherical in shape. There was a gift shop selling chocolates straight from Tokyo Tower ("AS SOLD IN FAMILYMART, WHERE YOU ARE ONE OF THE FAMILY") on her left, and to the right the ground level continued toward Out-Patient Registry. Backless couches arranged in a circle smack dab in the center, complimented by a tall potted plant. Elevators in the back, depositing patients on crutches, bound in wheelchairs.

A semicircular desk sat slightly off to the side of the couches, stationed by a pair of receptionists on computers. Rei walked up to the desk, steps measured and pronounced.

You can do this, Rei. You can do this….

"Excuse me," she said to the lady before her, "I'm here to see a patient, Tsukino Usagi. Do you know where I can find her?"

"Tsukino Usagi is located in the trauma center," said the receptionist. "Would you like me to show you the way?"

"If you're not too busy."

"Oh, I've had a lot of people come asking me about Miss Tsukino, I practically know the way by heart," the receptionist laughed lightly. Rei forced herself to smile; at least the woman was trying to lighten the mood. "It's right this way."

She followed her from the desk and past the gift shop, into one of the three elevators lining the wall.

"I heard about what happened to her," Rei heard the lady say as she pressed the button for the fourth floor. "Don't you think it strange for her to have been out so late at night?"

Rei shrugged. "Sorry, but I don't know the whole story. I got a voice message from one of my friends telling me about it, said she'd explain the rest when I got here." The girl's stomach plummeted as the elevator ascended on its tracks.

The lady's eyebrows receded into her hairline. "Really? I figured word would've gone around by now. It was on the news earlier this morning."

"Oh." Rei swallowed, but there was nothing to wet her dry mouth. "Well, um," she cleared her throat. "What I mean to say is…what do you find strange about Usagi being out late?"

"Something about it doesn't sit right with me. What's there to do at eleven fifty-five? Kids like her should already be in bed and getting their rest. You don't just go out in the midst of bad weather unless there's a serious emergency." A bell chimed within the elevator and the doors opened. They got out and proceeded down the corridor.

"I couldn't tell you," said Rei. "I've known Usagi for years. She's the type of person who has the eight to three routine drilled into her. There's no way she'd do a thing like that, not unless she had a very good reason."

"You and everyone else on this side of Minato-ku. What could have prompted her to sneak out in a thunderstorm? That's one eighty-thousand yen question I'd risk all the money in my checking account guessing."

"I just hope she's okay," Rei murmured to herself. She didn't care if the woman caught her words; she was probably thinking the same thing, too.

There wasn't much going on as they continued on their destination. Nurses and doctors of both sexes traversed the halls, some with clipboards in hand, others with stethoscopes curled round their necks. Middle-aged folk in long-sleeved sweaters and specks of gunmetal grey in their hair loitered in right-angle corners, walked the same path the two females were treading. They bore the same grim mask, looked out at the world through the same grim eyes; hands in their pockets and teeth biting bottom lips. Just like Rei.

Rei tried not to show it.

"This is it, Room 401." The receptionist stopped outside the open entrance to the room. "There's a waiting room around the corner and down the hall to your left."

Rei bowed. "Thank you. I'll be fine from here." The woman reciprocated the bow and took her leave.

She turned to the entryway. The lights in the room were dim, soft and translucent in their bulbs. There were two men and a woman in the room standing around a bed, bunched shoulder to shoulder and speaking in hushed tones. Rei recognized the man and the woman in plainclothes instantly: they were Kenji and Ikuko, Usagi's parents. The other man was a police officer, garbed in pressed navy blue uniform and peaked cap.

Lying in bed was a flaxen-haired girl no older than eighteen, her body draped up to the neck in a green blanket.

Usagi.

Her best friend of five years.

_Gods Above…._

"Excuse me." Rei poked her head inside, interrupting whatever conversation the trio was having. "Sorry to interrupt. May I come in?"

"Come on in, Rei," said Mrs. Tsukino sleepily; she must not have had caught a wink of rest since she got the call. "Have a seat, unless you just want to stay standing."

"I don't mind." The girl tiptoed into the room and slid into the hard, plastic chair next to the bed. She put her purse on the floor, clasped her hands to her lap. "How is she doing?"

"She seems to be in a stable condition," said Kenji, crossing his arms. "Aside from a few scrapes and scratches, she isn't seriously injured."

"Have the doctors come in to check on her?"

"Twice: once when the EMTs brought her to Critical Care and once before daybreak when they moved her to this location. A doctor should be stopping by any minute. Oh, where are my manners?" Kenji turned to the officer. "Rei, this is Officer Teguchi Tenkato; he's in charge of leading the investigation. Officer Teguchi this is Hino Rei, one of Usagi's close friends."

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Officer," said Rei, inclining her head to the man.

"Likewise, Miss Hino," said Teguchi, tipping his cap up in greeting. He had a deep, brassy voice that suited his broad frame. "It does my heart good to know Miss Usagi has friends who are constantly on the lookout for her."

"Thanks…but I don't recall anyone being out late last night. It was raining pretty hard, considering monsoon season's starting to wind down."

"Apparently a friend of Miss Usagi's was close by when the attack occurred. We received the call via the emergency hotline."

"Was it any of Usagi's other friends? Her boyfriend, maybe?"

Teguchi shrugged. "We don't know; she wished to remain anonymous. What we _do _know is that the call was made at eleven fifty-five p.m. Reports reveal Miss Usagi was found outside Four Guardians Park on the sidewalk, and, I'll quote, _'lying with arms folded in prayer, as an Egyptian pharaoh who is met with eternal sleep'_." He chuckled sheepishly. "At least, when I asked the EMT later, that was how he described how she looked."

"Did you find anything else?"

He shook his head. "Nothing so far. The ground may have been disturbed, but that could have been from any number of children or adults, heck even pets, wandering around the area before the storm."

"Or there could have been a scuffle." Rei gazed at her friend. "Usagi could have been trying to fight the person off, whoever it was." She heard Ikuko gasp, saw from her periphery the woman glance worryingly at her husband.

"It's very possible," said Teguchi, "or it could have been the other way around. Either way, my men and I will get to the bottom of this. We'll see to it that the perpetrator is brought to justice in the court of law." Rei didn't doubt him. "Now then, if you'll excuse me, Mister and Missus Tsukino, I'll be returning to my post at the station. We'll give you a ring if we uncover any possible leads."

"Thank you, Officer," said Kenji, shaking the man's hand and bowing. "Your help is greatly appreciated."

"Please take care, Officer," said Ikuko, mimicking her husband's actions.

"Will do. Miss Hino, it's been a pleasure meeting you." Teguchi tipped his cap to her again. "Pray hard and stay positive."

"I will," said Rei.

Teguchi nodded, and like a wraith in a dream lumbered quietly out of the room.

Rei let out a breath she wasn't aware she was holding. She lowered her eyes and studied Usagi's face. She looked peaceful, unperturbed by inner turmoil or the ruckus of the waking world. She reminded the girl of one of those little ceramic angel figurines she'd seen through the windows of gift shops and convenience stores, so innocent and bright-eyed and untouched by mankind's darker elements.

Except Usagi had a scratch on her, long and red and horizontal across the plain of her forehead. Where, Rei noted, the mark of the Moon hid beyond the flesh and blood of the sleeping princess.

Just what had happened to her?

No…better yet…who would do such a thing?

_Why?_ As far as Rei was aware, Usagi hadn't done a single bad thing in her life. She never cursed anyone out, never got on people's bad sides (well, she _tried_ not to), never had the capacity to hate and take it upon herself to exact revenge. She wasn't perfect by any means (she was still a glutton for sweets, still horrible at studying and academics), but Usagi was a good person. A very good person. So why…

Why…

"Rei?" It was Ikuko. "Are you okay, dear?"

Rei clenched her hands into fists, bit the inside of her cheeks. She stared at the floor between her feet, burned a hole through the tile. The words refused to come forth, threatened to bring with it a flood of tears that would dare to rival Noah's Ark. She couldn't speak, didn't want to blubber like a whale and make a fool of herself in front of everyone.

She breathed deep, looked up, and she didn't cry when she did speak. "…Y-Yeah. Um, Mister and Missus Tsukino, could you please do me a favor? Let everyone know I stopped by. Also, tell Minako to come over to the Hikawa Jinja whenever she has time; she was one who sent me the text about Usagi." She stood, grabbed her purse.

Ikuko stepped forward, her hand extended. "Oh, Rei…."

"I'm sorry, I can't stay. I have to go." She shouldered the bag, bowed low at the waist. "Please forgive me." She turned on her heel and booked it before Ikuko had a chance to stop her, hold her, comfort her—

Hino Rei hated hospitals with a passion.


	3. You Gotta Friend in Me

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

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**3.  
****You Gotta Friend in Me**

Rei didn't stop walking. She didn't pause to mutter apologies for bumping into passersby treading the halls, didn't cast a second glance when she brushed shoulders with a man and he called her vulgar names behind her back. She kept going until she saw the elevators and rushed inside before the doors could close on her.

She suppressed the button for the lobby, pushed the tip of her finger against it until the skin turned white with pressure. _Come on. Come on, dammit. Move already…!_

It did. There was that sensation again, a feeling of riding in a drop tower that breached the Earth's atmosphere but never quite got back down. Rei wished the steel box would go faster, wished she could punch a hole in it, take the jagged edges in both hands tear it wide and open so she didn't have to grab some sucker's throat and squeeze the life out of him. She wished she could do a lot of things right now, wished she was stronger and didn't feel like _this_—

The bell dinged. Rei flew from the cage, rounded the backless couches and its occupants, and homed in on the entrance. Once she went through the revolving doors, she weaved between a pair of cars parked on the curb of the cul-de-sac, crossed the island, and toward the goldenrod frame of the Subaru Legacy. She fumbled around in her pockets, swore aloud as she unzipped her purse and groped blindly for the ring. Finally she fished it out, jammed the key in the hole and popped the locks. She tossed both keys and purse onto the passenger seat, dropped behind the steering wheel, and slammed the door.

Rei exhaled harshly and put her face in her hands, ran her fingers through ink black tresses. Usagi…why oh why did it have to be Usagi? Why did it have to be Usagi and not someone else, maybe a junkie who bailed on her one-hundred plus hours of community service, or a thief who had a penchant for slipping through the law's grasp like that Sly Cooper character? Anyone with less heart and soul would have made a better victim than kind, fussy Tsukino Usagi.

She screwed her eyes, sniffed hard as the sting in her nose pinched uncomfortably and her throat closed with thickness. She couldn't face the Senshi, couldn't face Mamoru, in this weak, pathetic state. What would they think of her? Would they blame her for running away? Would they be mad that she didn't bother to stay and listen to what they had to say? For all they knew a youma and not a human could have been responsible for the attack, an otherworldly creature more powerful and intelligent unlike any blindly obedient monster they'd ever fought. All the Senshi had to approach this situation delicately, but surely they could do without one soldier, right? Surely they didn't require the likes of Hino Rei the coward, the weak-willed, the faint of heart…?

No! No, they'd never think of her that way! Never in their right minds would they proceed without a fellow sister-in-arms by their side. Everyone was human. Everyone had their moments of weakness. No one was perfect. No one had the power to bottle all their pain and anger and sorrow without losing their sense of self in the process. The Senshi would understand. Mamoru would understand. So would Usagi.

But they were without a leader, and without Usagi to guide them they were running in circles like headless chickens they were now. What were they going to do? Where would they start? Officer Teguchi said so himself that there was no physical evidence, nothing that would point them on their way to the yellow brick road. So where could they start? Four Guardians Park was a good place to look, but the area was cordoned by yellow tape and blue uniforms with their overly cautious German Shepherds. Besides, how much information could you glean from one location, considering how small it was? What could they extract from a patch of wild, untrimmed grass? She didn't think the force had the technology to scrape DNA into a Petri dish, more or less ship it to the labs in Tokyo for results.

She banged her fists against the wheel. Damn that attacker! Damn him and his cunning ways to the lowest, darkest reaches of Hell! If she ever caught a peep out of the police the person's identity, she was going to transform into Sailor Mars and light that dirty mother—!

_Knock-knock-knock._

Rei looked to her left. There was a girl standing next to the car, a pretty thing with yellow irises and hair wrapped at the ends like drills. She was tapping on the window, _knock-knock_, and twirling her hand in a circular motion. Roll it down, she seemed to say.

Rei did; she snatched the keys from the passenger side, turned it in its slot, and pressed the button below the stick-shift. The glass disappeared into the vehicle as a shark fin diving back into the brine. "Yeah?" she asked the girl. "What is it?"

"Are you okay?" said the girl, carefully enunciating her words with gentle inflection.

"What does it look like?" Rei bit sharply. "Why does it matter to you? It's none of your business."

"I know…but I couldn't help noticing as I was passing by. You seemed rather upset, so I thought I would stop to offer my condolences."

"Condolences?" Rei parroted dumbly. Then it dawned on her, and her ire only served to rise in a pit of roaring flame. "The hell you're trying to play at? You don't know what's going on. You don't even have the right to make assumptions on things that don't concern you."

"I mean you no ill will," the girl persisted, aggravatingly unflappable to the soldier's demeanor. "I heard someone had been sent to the hospital, but I'm rather new in the area so I apologize if I'm coming on too strongly."

_You think? _Rei wanted to tell the girl. She was tempted to roll the window back up, start the engine and leave her behind, coughing up a storm as the wheels kicked back a cloud of exhaust and burned rubber. And why not? It was best if no one but the police got involved. That, and if non-magical peoples couldn't solve it, this was a situation only the Senshi could tackle. Civilians like this kid had their own problems to deal with. Didn't she have anything better to do? Judging from the white jacket and the tartan skirt, she should be in class by now.

Rei sighed and put a hand on the wheel, looked the kid straight in the eye. If that's how she was going to be, so be it. Rei could use a refresher. "What do you want?"

The girl didn't miss a beat. "Why don't we go somewhere more private?"

"You're the boss." She rolled the window up, got out. Locked the car and turned to the kid, hands stuffed in pockets. "Go on. Lead the way."

The girl smiled. "Okay. Oh, by the way, I'm Tomoe Mami."

"Hino Rei. Now are we gonna cut to the chase or are you wanna let the whole world in on the party?"

Mami nodded. "You're right. Let's get moving. Follow me."

Rei tagged behind the girl, stayed by her shoulder two steps away. They left the parking lot and started down the sidewalk going eastbound. Traffic passed them by at a moderate pace, some of the drivers probably all too aware the cops were on the prowl for any suspicious activity. The extra security didn't stop pedestrians from tending to their own needs; to them it was just another work day, another school day. Time cards had to be punched every few hours and tests had to be finished by the end of the allotted hour. It was a normal day.

_If only that were so,_ Rei thought with a frown. When she looked back, the hospital was no longer in sight. _Wonder what this Mami chick has in mind…._

She got her answer ten minutes later. They approached a path of cobblestones riding up the crest of a hill like a chocolate-coated snake. There was a bed of azaleas on one side and a copse of smooth maple with an exquisite rock garden on the other. An arch stood sentinel at the start of the path, legs wrought iron and sign cracked ceramic. _Three Angels' Haven_, the sign read.

Rei's stomach clenched. Of all the places the kid could have chosen…why did it have to be a local park? _Tell her you don't want to be here. Ask her if there's somewhere else she'd like to go._ But she did say Mami was the boss. Hard as it was, she couldn't refuse the stranger's request. _Maybe a little heart to heart will do the trick._

There was an ice cream truck trundling up the street. Mami ran ahead and gave a piercing whistle that stabbed the air like a spearhead. The truck stopped and from the window a man wearing a garrison cap poked his head out. Curious, Rei picked up the pace.

"Rei, what flavor would you like?" Mami asked her. "I'm getting strawberry. There's chocolate, vanilla, _azuki_—"

"Do you have pistachio?" Rei asked the man.

"No, I'm sorry. I'm all out."

"What about _matcha_? Do you carry it?"

"That I do."

"_Matcha _it is."

Mami paid for the ice cream, then in a surprising gesture took Rei by the hand and led her into the park. It was a quaint, woody little area, more spacious and bigger than Four Guardians Park. A playground came into view as they climbed the hill, occupied by rambunctious children and watchful parents.

Benches were few and between, but there was one by a koi pond nestled in the shade of a hackleberry tree. Mami motioned them toward it and let go of Rei's hand to sit. "Is this a good spot?" Mami asked.

"Yeah, it's fine," Rei replied as she joined the girl at her side. She stared at her ice cream cone, smelled the faint, crisp tang of the powder.

"You alright?" Mami murmured quietly, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Rei sighed heavily. "…Yeah. Yeah, I'm cool. It's just that…well, my friend loves ice cream. A lot. So much that one time, when she tried applying for Dairy Queen, she listed cake as her hobby." She chuckled at the incredulous look on Mami's face. "I'm not kidding. I told her it was a stupid thing to do, that she needed to be mature, but she said she had a better chance if she was being sincerely honest. Funny thing is, she got a call from the store manager a week later saying she got the job." She shook her head, a wistful smile on her lips. "That Usagi…she's something else. I can never tell if she's being serious or trying to pull a fast one on me. Maybe when she wakes up and is given the A-OK, I'll go to the bakery and buy her the biggest, priciest chocolate cake they've got…."

"Is Usagi the person everyone is talking about?"

"The very same." Rei took a moment licking the ice cream melting on the cone. "I got a text message from a friend of mine when I woke this morning to tune in to the news. I didn't believe it at first, so I turned on the television and waited for the typical bull to run its course. And sure enough, as soon as the station came back from commercial they were all over it." Rei tilted her head back, stared somberly at the iron grey clouds. "I thought I was having a bad dream – you know, the kind where you wake up and go about your day as you usually do, 'cept somewhere down the line you realize this isn't _real_, this isn't what happens when you're aware enough to tell fact from fiction. That's how I felt after I pinched myself and knew it hurt, because as far as I know you can't feel pain in dreams. I had to see Usagi for myself."

"How is she?"

Her shoulders slumped. "I…I don't know. I didn't stay long, couldn't stand seeing her hooked up to the machines and the IV drip in her arm." She looked at Mami, world-weary but determined. "She's my best friend. I'd do anything for her. But knowing the attacker hasn't been caught, compounded with the fact the police can't find any cold hard evidence…it pisses me off."

"It hasn't even been a day. You need to give them time."

"I can't just sit here knowing the bastard's still out there. Something has to be done."

"But it's not going to happen today." Mami swept an arm at the wooded area. "These trees didn't grow in one day. Those adults at the playground were children then, their children fetuses growing in the womb, and these koi eggs. It takes time – and patience – for the results you see now, and it's going to take even more time when the adults become the elderly, the children the adults, and so forth. It's part of our development as human beings."

"I understand," said Rei, "but I don't _want_ to wait. I _want_ those _results_ now."

"At this point in time you don't have a choice. It's best if you – and your friends – stay off to the side and let the force do their job." Mami popped the tip of the cone in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and turned her face to a ray of sunlight peeking through the canopy. Rei saw there was a plastic sunflower clipped to the hair above her ear, an egg-shaped topaz adorned in the center.

There was something odd about that piece….

Mami noticed. She put a hand to the plastic rim of a petal and smiled. "Do you like it?"

"Huh?" It took a moment for the thought to register. "Yeah, it looks nice on you. Where did you get it?"

Her eyes flickered with an emotion that moved too fast for Rei to decipher. "A friend gave it to me for my birthday two years ago during school. We were having lunch under a blooming _sakura_ when she presented it." She looked away, fingers tracing the curve of the gem. "I miss her very much."

"Where did you live before you came to Azabu Juuban?"

"Mitakihara."

"I never heard of it. Where's it at?"

"It's northeast of here, about a two-hour drive."

Rei whistled. "That's pretty far. You ever thought of going back to see your friend?"

"Sometimes," Mami trailed off, lowering her hand, "but I can't. I'm afraid she might have forgotten me."

"In two years' time? If your bond is as close as you say it is there's no doubt in my mind your friend would forget a kind person like you." Rei felt her cheeks flush, but nonetheless she continued. "And what you did for me today, I can't forget either. So…thank you. I…kinda needed it."

Mami nodded. They sat for a while, silence punctuated now and then by the sound of prepubescent laughter and the wind rustling in the leaves. The cloud cover above shifted, spilling more liquid sunshine on their laps, into the rippling koi pond. The air was filled with the song of fork-tailed swifts.

Mami rose to her feet. "I should get going. I need to finish getting settled in at the apartments."

"By apartments, do you mean Crossroads down by the high school?"

"Yes."

"You want me to drive you there?" Rei stood and tossed the rest of the ice cream cone into the koi pond; not much left, but the little buggers were already over it. "I don't feel like going back to the hospital, and I don't have anything else to do besides going to a couple classes later this evening."

"I think I'll be okay."

"Sure about that?"

"I'll find my way eventually. I can take care of myself." She smiled prettily, and Rei knew for certain the girl wasn't lying through her teeth, even if she did look like a target repulsive _chikan_ would go after. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Hino Rei. Please do take care of yourself; if not for me, then for Usagi." She turned and walked away.

"Wait," Rei sauntered up and put a hand on her shoulder, prompting the kid to cast a curious glance. "I live near the Crossroads apartments, a block down the street in a Shinto shrine. The Hikawa Jinja. Stop by whenever you like. I can show you around."

"I would like that. If I should I ever be in need of someone, you'll be the first I'll go to." Mami reached over and lowered Rei's hand, the motion fluid with the grace of a delicate princess. "Until we meet again."

Rei watched her go. She wasn't a bad kid, that Tomoe Mami. A sweet girl, actually, if a little lonely. That was understandable; every kiddo that moved to a new neighborhood or prefecture reacted in similar manners. That would change; with time, Mami will be exploring outside her comfort zone and into unknown territory which soon become as familiar as the lines on the back of her hands. All it would take were time and patience.

Rei laughed. Just a few minutes ago she wasn't so keen on the idea. She still didn't want to putts around and wait for the police to make an announcement. She still wasn't in the mood to visit Usagi any time soon. But her heart felt a little lighter, her burden less troublesome.

Maybe there was hope.

Maybe Usagi would wake up and tell the cops everything they needed to hear.

Maybe.

Rei began the trek back to the hospital, and afterwards home.


	4. Big IRON

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**4.  
****Big IRON**

The night was young, but nothing lasted forever.

"Is something on your mind, Ms. Meiou?" Kenji asked from Usagi's bedside. "You've been awfully quiet."

The woman perked to wakefulness and half-turned from her place at the window. Ah, she'd been drifting off again, and not in the sleepy-tired sense. Get back into place. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have a lot on my mind."

"I know. It's been a very rough day for us." For Ikuko, for Shingo, and for himself; they hadn't left the hospital since yesterday morning.

He pushed his glasses up with a finger. "I wish I had the answers, you know? I wish I could tell everyone why Usagi snuck out the house in the middle of the night and who this attacker is. If I had those answers, my wife and son wouldn't have to worry anymore. No one would." He sighed. "But…I don't. I don't have that ability, and even if I did would anyone believe me? Ikuko and Shingo might, but I doubt the police would consent to a man who has nothing to back his claims."

"At some point in our lives," said Setsuna, "we wish we could contain all the knowledge that is furthest from our grasp. I don't blame you for wanting, Mr. Tsukino. Any parent whose child has been victim to battery would feel the same."

"It doesn't make sense." The older man gazed down at his daughter. "If only Usagi could wake up and tell us what happened. Who knows, she might have gotten a good look at the person. She could give a facial composite to one of Officer Teguchi's artists."

Setsuna nodded, continued staring at the numerous lights across the horizon. "It's possible. That is, if she can remember."

"She must," Kenji said sharply. "The more she remembers the more likely police will be motivated to respond quickly and apprehend the suspect. Every minute detail counts."

"My apologies, Mr. Tsukino, I didn't mean for it to come out that way." Crimson eyes roamed up and locked on the starry sky. "But say she can't recall the suspect's face. If Usagi cannot lend credence, then your next best option would be to ask eyewitnesses."

"Nobody has come by since the morning broadcast."

"Ah, but Mr. Tsukino it's just as you said: every detail counts. There must be someone who is bold enough to offer his or her side of the story."

"That may be so, Ms. Meiou, but not everyone is a willing participant. Stepping forward means you're casting away a sense of anonymity. Stepping forward is the moment where silence breaks and the world is filled with noise." The crow's feet around his eyes curled up grimly. "Once you step forward, your life will be forfeit."

"That's not always the case." But unfortunately, sometimes it was.

"I've seen it before; once, eight years ago, when I had to go overseas for a business arraignment. It was in the States in the city of Chicago, and it was there I saw rival gangs fighting in the streets. One of the sons of the businessmen I was to congregate with was gunned down trying to protect his younger brother. The police conducted an investigation and asked for anyone to step forward and give them the name of the gunman, but the neighbors refused to speak. A week later the younger brother went to the station and told them everything: the gunman, the gang he belonged to, where the gang headquarters were located (apparently because a former friend of his was involved, or so I've heard). The next morning the police received a 911 call and arrived to find the boy and his family dead in their own home, bullet holes and blood strewn all over the place." He paused. "It was horrible, just…horrible. I never thought people could be capable of such cruelty until that day. I can't imagine how deep in anguish that man must have been."

"And you're afraid if anyone were to speak up, that same grisly fate would fall upon them. Or you and your family."

"That's correct."

She hummed thoughtfully, gaze settling on a full white moon. "I assure you, Mr. Tsukino, if for some reason circumstances come to that point, there will be people who will do everything in their power to protect the innocent. It is a duty they will undoubtedly serve, even if it means they must sacrifice themselves in the process."

"Surely you don't think it's going to escalate, do you, Ms. Meiou?" Kenji asked disbelievingly. "How can you be so certain?"

A humorless smile graced her lips. Indeed, how can she be so certain? As a Soldier of Time and Change, how can the future ever be determined truthfully, flawlessly?

She shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. Call it a gut feeling, if you will. Anything can happen; it's a matter of motive, action, and, some might say, providence." What may or may not be defined by the Fates, the stars, God. Metaphysical libertarianism and determinism were very conflicting subjects, but what is considered truth? What is a lie? What made us into who we are? Who else can provide the answers but an omnipresent, omniscient being that to some may or may not exist? It was one of many questions Setsuna had no intention of answering.

She saw his brow crinkle worryingly in their reflections. "I hope it doesn't. I don't want any more people to get hurt." – _If at all_, she noted to herself— "It's bad enough we as a family have to go through with it, and in the dark, no less."

"One day at a time, Mr. Tsukino, and soon enough the police will cast the suspect from the shadows." But how long? How long until the die is cast and the Rubicon crossed? How long until Usagi wakens?

Setsuna didn't know.

"I'll be taking my leave now, Mr. Tsukino. I have a very busy schedule I must attend to."

Kenji nodded. "Of course, Ms. Meiou, I won't keep you any longer."

"You'd best catch up on your sleep, if you don't my saying so. I don't doubt the days ahead will be difficult."

"My family will do what it can to maintain some semblance of normality. There's nothing more we can do except wait and hope for the answers to come."

"Take care, Mr. Tsukino," said Meiou Setsuna. _And you as well,_ she added as she sent a final glance toward her Princess's prostrate form.

She left without another word.

* * *

The elevator reached its destination, and the doors parted on their tracks for her to step through. Stilettos clicked against the tile, resonated loudly in fluorescent silence.

Haruka, Michiru, and Hotaru were sitting on the couches, and they looked in her direction as she approached them. They rose and gathered around her.

"How is she?" Young Hotaru asked Setsuna. "Did Usagi wake up?"

"She's still asleep," the older woman replied, "and if something's not done soon, she'll stay asleep for a long, _long_ time."

"How long is 'soon'?" asked Haruka.

"I don't know, and no matter how many times you threaten me I will not go back in time. Some rules I am willing to break, but I'll do no such thing to the taboos Queen Serenity laid in ages past. It's not worth the risk."

"You stopped time for us once and came back afterwards. Are you telling me you won't sacrifice your life in exchange for the Princess's?"

"We don't know who we're dealing with. Do you want me to take unnecessary precautions for an enemy who may not even be youma or extraterrestrial?" Setsuna shook her head. "No, I won't do it. I stand by my decision."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing!" Haruka exclaimed. "You refuse to save a single life, and yet here you are standing among us, _away_ from the Space-Time Door! You should be punished!" She poked her elder squarely in the chest.

"Haruka, she's right," said Michiru, putting herself between the two Soldiers. "We can't act blindly. Haven't you seen the mark on Usagi's face?"

"The one on her forehead?" Hotaru asked.

Michiru nodded. "Yes, that."

"What about it?" Haruka asked.

"It's where all our birthmarks are found when we transform, you know that. If our tiaras are inflicted with enough damage, we revert back to our civilian forms."

Haruka's brow shot up her hairline. "Are you saying—"

"That whoever attacked Usagi knows she is Sailor Moon." Setsuna finished for her, firmly holding each of the Outer Senshi's eyes. "Or, if I may guess, the attacker tried to stop Usagi from transforming and succeeded in preventing her from doing so."

"Maybe the attacker gained the upper hand in the fight," Hotaru suggested.

"Wouldn't we have known if Usagi was attacked?" Haruka asked. "Did she have her communicator on her?"

"I didn't see it when we walked in," said Michiru. "The police could have confiscated her possessions as evidence."

"But the Officer who was here earlier said they couldn't find any." Haruka snorted. "I don't think Usagi even owns a cell phone much less know how to operate it."

"Regardless of the investigation, we must to be vigilant," said Setsuna. "Someone – or something – could be lurking in the city right now, waiting to make its next move. Until we learn all there is about the enemy, our surroundings cannot be deemed wholly safe."

"So what do you suppose we do?" Hotaru asked.

"We hold an emergency meeting, as soon as humanly possible. Schools are closed tomorrow, so you, Rei, and Ami should be available. The rest we can contact the minute we leave." She started for the entrance.

"What time should we give them?" Michiru called at her back.

"The earlier we congregate, the more we can have the day to ourselves."

"And where do you think you're going?" Haruka hailed sternly. "We're all in this together. You have to do your part, too."

"And I will," said Setsuna, and she stopped to bestow the Wind Soldier with an ancient, serene smile. "I've been away from my post for too long. After all, it's a taboo I can't afford to keep breaking." She turned around and continued on her way.

It was going to be another cold night, she could tell as soon as she passed the rotary doors and across the parking lot. At least it wasn't pouring like it did yesterday. The attacker was smart to wait for the storm to culminate, boiling over like a brew that had been sitting too close in its cauldron. The weather was awful, visibility obscured with fog and dime-sized hail, but the conditions – and the environment – were perfect to a T. Every day Four Guardians Park saw its quotient of rambunctious children, dogs running loose after being taken off their leashes.

So many footsteps, so much DNA. With their equipment, it would be a while yet before the police could scrounge a thread of hair or dead skin cells belonging to Tsukino Usagi. Mister Teguchi didn't even have to say so to drive the point home.

Where did that leave them?

Where did that leave the Senshi?

The Inners and the Outers were the only known Sailor Senshi to exist within the Solar System, but there was innate ability only they could utilize. The girls, including the cats Luna and Artemis and Chiba Mamoru the Soldier of Earth, were able to detect spiritual energy via a sixth sense ingrained unto them upon their rebirth after the fall of the Silver Millennium. It was a unique gift, one that could unravel the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and how far and apart they were in location. The downside to this lay in the fact that the sixth sense was extremely weak in civilian form compared to that of the Senshi form, which amplified tenfold in accordance with the release of endorphins and epinephrine.

For Setsuna, she didn't detect any foreign residue among Usagi's energy, nothing human or youma. If she couldn't sense it, then it was likely the other Senshi couldn't as well. Still, it did not explain the glaring red mark on her forehead. It looked angry, raw, as if it hadn't been healing correctly. Problems would arise if the wound got infected, and if it wasn't treated quickly and septicemia set in it was going to put Usagi out of commission, regardless of whether or not she woke from the coma.

Could it be that the mark caused her Princess to sink into darkness? To a mortal who was not born from the rebirth, it would appear as a regular scratch, probably the result of a rough play-fight with a friend or pet. However, to the eyes of those reincarnated after the fall, it was different. Setsuna spent many a minute studying the mark, searching within her mind any unusual or suspicious energy.

She was surprised to find nothing of the sort. It left her feeling hollow and deeply unsettled.

There were too many loose ends and not enough information. _Perhaps I should have listened to Haruka and gone back in time; it would save everyone, and Usagi, a lot of trouble and heartache._

_But what good would that do? You said so yourself, we don't know who we're dealing. This may not be the work of a single person, but a group._ Except the last group who waged war with the Sailor Senshi was Shadow Galactica, and it had been two years ago since Sailor Moon cleansed Galaxia from the taint of Chaos.

Damn it, she should have gone after Rei when she had the chance. If there was one Sailor Senshi who could detect malevolent, foreign spiritual energy better than the rest, it was her.

Setsuna stopped at the mouth of a yawning alley, looked both ways, and strolled into the shadows. It was too late now. Maybe she could bring it up at the meeting, learn what Rei had to say.

She produced a jingling key ring from her pants pocket and rifled through them. Car key, house key, car alarm, garage door opener…ah, there it is. She pressed the bronze skeleton key between the cracks of the cement wall and turned it.

A door-size rectangle spilled glowing radiance into the alley, cutting sharp reliefs into corners that would put neo-noir films to shame. Beyond lay an endless expanse dotted with beds of black roses and poppies. The sky wheeled high above, speckled with stars and colorful aurorae. At the far edge of the horizon, a behemoth of an arch could be made out.

The Space-Time Door.

Setsuna crossed the threshold, and the gateway noiselessly sealed shut behind her.

Time did not exist in this dimension; time held no purpose in this universe or any other in the multiverse. The Brink existed outside natural conventions, didn't abide by the laws of physics but quantum mechanics. It was a window to the windows outside the grasp of mortal comprehension, contained closed spaces of everything and nothing that can and cannot but will or will not see fruition in the nearest or farthest futures. If you can think, it is possible. If you think an event impossible in one universe, it can be possible in another.

In short, Meiou Setsuna was the lord of all she surveyed – past, present, and future, and she was well into doing her part for the slumbering Princess

"Luna," she called into the vaporous ether. "Have you found anything?" Despite The Brink's vast enormity, her voice did not echo.

"I did, actually." The black cat scurried into view like a ghost suddenly materializing from a painting. Her tail bobbed behind her, wrapped at the end by a vaporous, translucent ribbon. "Unfortunately, there aren't any more similar in nature."

"You did what you could," said Setsuna. She indicated a nod at the ribbon. "Let's see what we've got." She unwound the wisp from Luna's tail and spread it out along the palms of her hands.

It was like watching a film reel brought to life, a play-by-play story one draws a series of doodles on a sketchpad and flips the pages so that it is given animation. The pictures were blurry and jilted, but it sustained enough structure to provide her an idea of what was occurring.

Her brow scrunched in confusion. "What is this?" In the pictures, a girl was fighting against a plethora of monsters. The monsters were…unlike anything Setsuna had ever seen. Their bodies were not corporeal but instead abstract, a collage of Renaissance artwork and Disney drawn abominations slapped together by spiked wheel ruts, vines oozing viscous sap, children's building blocks, metal rods and cable cords, all vibrating and stretching and clawing to escape the prison holding them back. They could almost be described as humanoid or beastly, but their limbs were long and twisted at impossible angles, their expressions exaggerated with lustful hunger and rage.

But that wasn't what surprised Setsuna.

It was the girl. She was firing into the mass of creatures with what appeared to be an old-fashioned Tommy gun. One of the creatures, a towering, hulking giant with nine eyes (seven of which were closed or blind) and felled tree trunks protruding from its back, lunged forward and slammed its gnarled hand down to earth.

Just as it was about to engulf the street, it _froze_. The monsters froze. Except the girl was _still moving_, vanishing in and out of thin air like sunshine reflecting off running water. She placed grenades around the thing's hand, up its arm with a series of camera-shudder flickers, and in front of its numerous eyes. The girl reappeared seconds later back on the streets away from the beasts.

The resulting chain reaction was too brilliant for Setsuna to look at. She dropped the ribbon and shielded her eyes until the lights dimmed and the spots floating in her retinas faded.

"How is this possible?" the Outer Senshi asked Luna when her vision cleared. "This girl can stop time…and yet she still lives. She doesn't even bear the mark of a Sailor Senshi."

"My guess is she's a post-reborn Earthling like Mamoru," said Luna, "or a youma."

"How is this possible?" Setsuna repeated aloud. She gazed up at the eternal night sky. "Who is this girl that dare cheats death?"

* * *

The barrier collapsed, and reality reassembled its physical state. The street was as bare as it had been before the assault, cold and bathed in sterile lamplight.

She clutched her chest and doubled over, wracked with crushing pain. She should have taken them sooner, shouldn't have been so careless as to forget. What if she had suffered this while fighting? Then what? But the battle was won. There was no cause to worry.

She grunted and fell to her knees, changing back to her civilian form. She patted down her clothes and withdrew the bottle from her breast pocket. Shaking, fumbling fingers unscrewed the safety cap and shook a couple pills into her waiting hand. She popped them in her mouth and dry swallowed before Old Friend Guilt could reach through the bars and take her by the throat.

"Well done, Homura! You certainly didn't pull any stops this time." A shadow fell before her, and through lidded eyes she saw him – no, not him, _it_ – like the curious feline he pretended to be. "Ah, but I'm afraid it's still not enough to fulfill my quota. I guess these Witches were, how do you say, all hat and no cattle, wouldn't you agree?"

"Fucker," she snarled, struggling to her feet. "I am far from finished. I can still fight. I can still stand and keep on going."

"Maybe so, but you can't keep ignoring those Grief Seeds," said Kyubey. "Your Soul Gem is getting very dirty; how will you ever reach your potential if you don't take what is yours?"

"Your time will come," Homura continued. She limped over to one of many black jewels littering the ground and picked it up. "It happened once. I will make it happen again."

"Miracles are almost exceedingly impossible to recreate, even for Puella Magi."

"It can be done." She let the empty Seed roll from her hand and stared into the depths of the cleansed Soul Gem. "There is still hope."

"Yes," said Kyubey quietly, "there is still hope."

"There are miles to go before I reach the end, and when I do" she glared at the Incubator "I will destroy you, you…and that traitor."

"You can't kill me," he said matter-of-factly. "It's useless to try."

"Then I will keep trying. Human or Witch, I will slay whoever stands in my path. If I cannot do that, then I don't deserve to breathe the same air as Kaname Madoka!"

She started walking. Far away the horizon glittered like colorful jewels floating adrift on a black, black sea.

_I will find you, Madoka. I will do everything in my power to deliver the future that is meant to be, Fates be damned. A world without you is a world unworthy of existence._ She looked up at the expressway sign above her. SE TOKYO 25 MILES KEEP LEFT, it declared in bold white letters.

_This time, I _will not_ fail!_

Akemi Homura marched forth, straight of posture and steely-eyed.

The night was old, but nothing lasted forever.


	5. Dreams of the Shore Near Another World 1

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**5.  
****Dreams of the Shore Near Another World 1**

Usagi awoke to the sight of a looming, cerulean sky and the garbled screams of hell in her ears.

"_Don't give the bastards any quarter!"_ a girl's voice shouted above the din. _"Don't let 'em pass through!"_

The noise was far and apart, but she could hear them as if they were being made right next to her: The earth quaking under the pads of her fingers; gunshots cracking in the air like fireworks; steel clashing against steel, slicing through malleable flesh; animal growls and avian shrieks lusting, craving, thirsting for blood.

It sounded so close, like a puff of rank breath caressing her cheek.

"_Is that all you got?"_ the same girl taunted. _"Come ON! Show me what you can do! Show me…YOUR TRUE POWER!"_

"_Gods Above!"_ a second, female voice growled in exasperation. _"Shut up and concentrate! They're breaching the barrier!"_ Her words were drowned by an abrupt, teeth-rattling explosion.

"_GODS-DAMN MOTHER—!" _The first girl swore. There came a second blast, louder, closer, which was followed by a distant war cry.

Usagi's heart lurched to her throat. She looked around to find the world a sun-baked, starving wasteland which stretched beyond the horizon. There was no vegetation, no trees, no buildings.

No life.

A high-pitched, strangled roar; mad, eye-rolling laughter; dumb, primal rage; all shattered serenity.

Hard, labored pants escaped clenched teeth. "S-S-S-Someone," she croaked, barely above a whisper. "H-H-H-Help...H-H-Help…. S-Somebody…."

_"It's okay."_

She looked up, up into the face of another girl with gorgeous pools of ruby wine and shoulder-length pink hair. Her simple, knee-high dress was spotted with glossy blood. _"Don't be afraid,"_ she said with a reassuring smile. _"We're here for you."_

"What…What's going on?" she asked. "Those noises—"

_"They're monsters,"_ said the girl. _"They're trying to get to you. Feed on you."_

"Feed on me…?"

_"Yes, and they're very relentless. But it's going to be alright, because my friends are doing everything they can to protect you, and so will I."_ The girl's smile vanished, replaced by a solemn frown. _"Failure…is not an option, and if we fail you will lose your only chance."_

"Chance? Chance for what?"

Somewhere over that horizon a red light shone, and somewhere in that light she could hear the first girl speak in a voice full of power and strength:

_"Our Father  
__Who art in heaven  
__Hallowed be thy name…."_

_"The chance to be free and to set free,"_ the girl answered.

_"Thy kingdom come  
__Thy will be done,  
On earth as it is in heaven.  
__Give us this day our daily bread  
And forgive us our debts  
As we also have forgiven our debtors…."_

The light grew stronger, brighter, and the cries of wretched beasts rang wild and harried as steel chanted and struck without abandon.

"What do you mean?"

_"Our lives have not been made easy. We have fought and killed, sometimes with meaning, other times without care. We are not perfect and we are without sin, but…deep down…in our hearts and our souls…we're beautiful. Beautiful, lonely creatures." _The girl smiled to herself. She got to her feet and with sure, measured movements brought forth a longbow of dark polished yew.

_"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…."_

She withdrew an arrow from the quiver tied to her back and knocked it on the bow's string. _"It's not too late,"_ she murmured. _"We can still change the future."_

_"And lead us not into temptation,  
__But deliver us from evil."_

_"We can still make our own. All we need is you…."_

_"For thine is the kingdom,  
__And the power, and the glory,  
__Forever and ever!"_

_"YOU WILL NOT PASS!"_ the second girl declared, and the beasts howled and recoiled from the brightening, compacted glow.

_"And maybe then…maybe then…."_

Hands clasped together, a thunderclap to rival the wrath of gods. _"AMEN!"_

The girl blinked, and the tears flowed.

She let the arrow fly. It disappeared over the horizon with a piercing whistle.

Nothing happened.

Then, a flash of lightning, followed by an ear-shattering explosion. A pink and red mushroom cloud bloomed like an ill-gotten flower. A shockwave fell across the land, carrying dust, sediment, and cordite.

Usagi couldn't move. She breathed in a lungful of desert and death and coughed until her chest ached. A miasma of fog and mist suddenly billowed from between the cracks in the earth. In seconds the land was covered, the sun shrouded. Darkness descended.

"Who are you?" she cried in between coughs. "Who are you?"

There was no answer, no sound. The air became chill and damp.

Usagi rolled on her side and curled into a ball, praying for warmth.

She heard a faint beep, and there was.


	6. Days Go By

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**6.  
****Days Go By (And Still I Think of You…)**

**September 3**

The alarm clock went off at six on the dot, and through the sleep-thick haze Hiromi Go's "Goldfinger '99" blared like sirens on a shipwrecked island. That, and Chiba Mamoru woke with an urge to shave.

He sat up and, rubbing his eyes, looked out past the glass wall of his apartment. The sky was just starting to brighten. _Sunrise already; and to think a few hours ago I went to bed._ He sighed, stretched his limbs, and swung his legs off the mattress. He reached forth and touched the clock—

_("MAMI!" the redhead shouts above the bass pumping from the game's speakers. "How much more yen you got?"_

_The blonde girl peeks inside her coin-purse. "Enough for one more game," she says._

"_For the love of Gods, no more!" the shorter, blue-haired girl groans, hands on her knees and panting. "We've been here for almost three hours! I've got homework that still needs to be finished!"_

"_You're such a sore loser," the redhead clucks. "C'mon, one more game and then we blow this joint. Whaddya say?"_

"You_ are the worst senpai I've ever _had!_"_

"_That's the ticket! Mami, drop the cash and make it bounce. And you," she tells the blue-haired girl, "quit your whining and shake that candy ass. Make it worth your while!" Then she slaps the girl's rear and laughs at the furious, offended glare directed at her. Mami giggles and the pink-haired girl next to her clutches her sides and guffaws. The brunette behind them rolls her eyes and shakes her head._

_A moment later and _"Goldfinger '99" _plays once more.)_

"What the—?" Mamoru retracted his hand and gawked at the alarm clock. He stared at his hand. _What was that just now?_ While not a stranger to psychometry, this unique ability still managed to catch him unawares, even after two years since the last battle he fought as Tuxedo Kamen. Except…he had never experienced someone else's memory in this particular manner. If you wanted access to a person's memory, it had to be adjunctive with the object said person interacted with, and that girl whose eyes he had seen through…he'd never met nor seen her before.

_Weird._

It was ten after six. The sun was slowly climbing over the skyscrapers. Hiromi Go ended with a bang and Porno Graffiti (what kind of name was _that?_) spruced the airwaves with "Agehachou".

Mamoru got up and switched off the radio—

_("THEREISNOHOPE!—")_

He recoiled and looked around. She sounded so close, as if she were standing right next to him. But it wasn't the redhead, it didn't sound like her. No, this girl was shrill, hysterical… and totally _helpless._

What had he just seen?

No, not now. He had a busy day ahead of him, classes to attend and assignments to do. They would only interfere. These…thoughts, memories, whatever they were, could wait.

He went to the bathroom, did his business, and brushed his teeth. He pulled the razor and aftershave from the medicine cabinet, set the aftershave on the toilet seat and picked up the razor. Then he noticed his face. _Really_ noticed.

_My Gods, I didn't think I looked this bad._ He knew he hadn't been getting enough sleep, but the dark craters under his eyes and stubble growing on his cheeks like grass was testament to how poorly he was handling himself.

Nine days. Nine days since Usagi had been attacked, and come eleven fifty-five this evening it would be ten days. And still she did not wake. Mamoru stayed by her side for hours on end, watching the rise and fall of her chest, the flutter and twitch of muscles between her brow, the intermittent hum of monitors hooked around her. It really did appear as though she were sleeping. The Tsukino family doctor, Dr. Himari, made it clear there was nothing wrong with her vitals. Her breathing was stable, her pulse and blood pressure normal, her heart rate slow but relaxed. The cut on her forehead was treated with alcohol and bandaged, which killed any chance of infection.

But Dr. Himari was as confused as the police were concerning their investigation. A person in a coma had to have been afflicted with external or internal sources: physical trauma, hemorrhages (such as bleeding caused by hypertension, aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, and tumors), swelling and lack of oxygen to the brain. For Usagi to have been rendered comatose, she had to have suffered some sort of injury, and as far as Mamoru was aware she did not have a history of major illnesses or allergies caused by food or weather or conditions inherited from generations past.

Could she have been poisoned? Dr. Himari ordered a toxicology test last Monday, but the results were not expected to be released until the end of the month, news that had Mr. Tsukino up in arms and nearly escorted out of the building by security. Mamoru couldn't blame the man, but as a first-year student studying at Tokyo Medical University in Shinjuku he knew multiple tests had to be performed before it could be definitely confirmed that Usagi had not poisoned during the 'alleged' attack (as some critics on media outlets were voicing as of late).

Until it was time the results were received and read aloud to the curious Tsukino clan and the Inner and Outer Senshi, Dr. Himari would have to run those tests on Usagi's condition. CT scans and glucose tests were to be performed every three hours so he and his assistants could follow up on any possible changes during the period after the initial test and the next. And if it turned out that Usagi was not poisoned or diagnosed with life-threatening maladies…well, Mamoru hoped Dr. Himari was prepared to deal with the consequent fallout.

He hoped the girls were prepared.

He hoped he was, too.

"I can't keep doing this to myself," he said to his reflection. "It hurts…but Usako would want me to go about my days as usual. Go to school, visit Motoki at Crown Arcade, see how the girls are doing, she'd want that. Not this. So…let's do our best and keep our chin. What do you say, Mamoru? Sound good?" They nodded in unison. "Right, let's get moving. We're dawdling as it is."

So he shaved the stubble from his cheeks and ventured back to the bedroom. He exited a few minutes later in a navy blue sweatshirt (the temperature was at a comfortable sixty-five degrees, but it would drop to the low fifties when nightfall arrived), khakis, Western Oxfords, and a Swallows baseball cap. _We all support the team, one way or another._

He was not expected to leave for school until seven-thirty, so he had more than enough time to whip together a breakfast he would not have to rush to finish and fly out the door (he had an unhealthy habit of sleeping in late when turning in early for the night, which was discarded when Usagi was hospitalized). Dishes were pulled from the cabinets and set aside on the counter. A pot boiled water and white rice while he retrieved a container of cooked tuna leftover from yesterday.

Soon he had his food laid on the table. Sunlight filtered cornflower slats through the blinds. Warblers chirped gaily.

Mamoru sat and ate and stirred a mug of hot green tea. The television, an old but operable twenty-two inch Toshiba, was tuned in to the local news station, Crossroads Channel 10. On screen a reporter was presenting a voice-over recap of the attack, footage alternating between night-shrouded Four Guardians Park and bright but overcast Crossroads General Hospital. It pained Mamoru every time he flipped through the channels, every time he heard the same key phrases repeated over and again by men and women: "Tsukino Usagi was found unconscious," "an anonymous phone call made at eleven fifty-five tipped off police," "Four Guardians Park closed until further notice," "so far police have not been able to obtain evidence." And so on and so forth.

It switched to a scene outside the police station, which was really a long, squat brick rectangle of a building. The fire house sulked beside its counterpart, standing tall and proud with its garage doors open and a pair of sleek, flaming red engines parked halfway in. A flock of journalists grouped around a podium manned by none other than Teguchi Tenkato, cameras flashing and microphones thrust close as far as their arms could reach. His associates lined the wall behind him, shoulders squared and spines erected in a manner that would knock straightedge protractors off the market. Their faces were painted on like dried papier-mâché.

Officer Teguchi appeared to be addressing the gathering. Mamoru fetched the remote and increased the volume until the journalist's voice resonated from wall to wall. "Very few have come forward for questioning and offered you little answer to the investigation. What do you plan to do about it?"

"We will continue interviewing any person who is willing to step forward and speak. Those who are withholding information we have not learned of will not be punished. You are more than welcome to speak openly or remain anonymous."

"And if nothing new is discovered, what then?"

Teguchi answered determinedly, "We intend to expand our search outside Four Guardians Park into the suburbs and the downtown areas. I am inclined to believe someone is out there who knows exactly what happened on the night of August twenty-fourth."

"Do you mean the person who called the 119 number?" another reporter asked.

Teguchi hesitated as if he didn't want to indulge the secret, but then relented with a nod. "Indeed. Unfortunately, we still don't know who she is. The women we have questioned over the week have said they were not awake the moment the attack took place."

"How do we know the caller is female?" a third interviewer posed. "What if the person is male?"

"I can assure you, Miss Usagi's guardian angel is most definitely female." A tall, gangly officer stepped up to Teguchi's side. The camera angle shifted its focus on him, captured the caramel tan of his skin and the trim pencil mustache bordering the ridge of his upper lip. _Kenba I._ was embossed on the badge pinned to his chest. "I answered the phone and relayed the young lady's message to the available units."

"Who's to say an attack ever happened?" a man's voice barked. "You haven't found any credible evidence that supports your claims!"

"Tsukino Usagi has been comatose for little over a week," Teguchi growled, eyes narrowed warningly. "I have seen her myself, as have the Tsukino family and Miss Usagi's acquaintances."

"You refuse to answer my question! Where is the evidence, Officer? Is there something you're hiding that could possibly incriminate the investigation?"

"How dare you!" Kenba snarled, starting forward.

Teguchi held his partner back with his arm. "No, you're right," he said to the off-screen man. "I won't lie to you when I say our investigation has returned nothing." He looked up from the thicket of microphones, hands knuckle-white on the podium. "As a matter of fact, I will go as far to say that if we had not seen Miss Usagi lying on the sidewalk during the storm, I would've come to believe we fell for a prank call. Whoever attacked her couldn't have picked a better time and place. There were no traces of blood, no patches of disturbed earth our dogs could detect or muddied footprints, nothing to prove there was a scuffle to begin with."

"Then why was Miss Usagi found the way she was? On her back with hands clasped to her breast, as if she were in an open casket?"

"Your guess is as good as anyone's. It may be a sign that the attacker regrets his or her actions…or it could be a way of laying out the victim's body before fleeing the crime scene; a warning to whomever attempts to put an end to his or her games." A dark cloud flitted across his face. "And that if the hunt is to continue, the victim's fate will be much worse than what has befallen Tsukino Usagi."

A murmur ran through the crowd like a cold, wet shiver. It sowed seeds of a diverse variety: anxiety, concern, curiosity, fear, and panic balanced on a platform ready to teeter into mad oblivion. Then there were weeds, invasive species of suspicion, doubt, denial, and conspiracy that latched onto flowers blossoming hope for the young Tsukino girl and leeched an iota of possibility the girl was ever going to recover and, to Mamoru's great dismay, given the justice she rightly deserved.

Mamoru wasn't a drinker by nature, never really was, but he wished he had a bottle on hand. Wished he could pop the cap and drain the contents until he was so smashed he couldn't tell if green meant stop or red meant go.

Instead, Mamoru grabbed his mug of tea with the same harsh grasp Teguchi had on the wooden podium and sipped. He paused, peered down the ceramic, and realized it was empty.

"We are _not_ going to give up on this girl," Teguchi declared into the speakers. "Mark my words; we are not going to stop until this person is caught. We will comb all of Honshu, all of Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku if we have to, but believe you me there _will be justice_. Tsukino Usagi may have only been the beginning, but we must do all we can to prevent a similar incident from happening and maintain our well-being and the safety of our children…." The conference tapered off from there and switched back to the reporter at the news station, concluding that Crossroads Channel 10 would continue to follow the story for future updates.

Mamoru sighed and sagged in the chair. There was _still_ nothing new…but something nagged him. Officer Teguchi said anyone who conferred with police could request for anonymity, but then stated that the force didn't know who the girl who had phoned 119 was. Had Teguchi misspoken and contradicted himself? It was likely he made a mistake and hadn't noticed. But didn't he say the girl wanted to stay anonymous at the hospital? If so, then Teguchi was in the wrong and shouldn't have breathed a word about her.

This raised a new question: Were the police keeping the caller's identity from _them_, the family and friends of Tsukino Usagi? Did they believe someone close to her to be the suspect? No, it couldn't be. Teguchi Tenkato was a man among men; well-mannered, polite, and faithful, but most of all he held out hope for Usako and the day he and his men apprehended the criminal. Why would he even think that?

The answer hit Mamoru like a wrecking ball to the gut.

"No," he moaned, and ran his fingers through his hair. "No, no, no…!" Teguchi was not that kind of man, but if an innocent man can be capable of murdering one person or a dozen, then anyone was more or less susceptible to do anything.

In which case, Teguchi Tenkato could be searching for a scapegoat to silence the skepti_c_s.

Was he getting desperate? Could it be that because of the lack of progress and substantial evidence he was turning to amoral options? That had to be it. There was no other way around it.

_Usako,_ Mamoru thought, _what should I do?_ He lowered his head and touched his face to the table's cool surface. _I wish you were here, Usako. You could make them understand. We're not bad people. We would never hurt you. We're good people, right? Haven't we been good to you?_

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be.

They were good people. They had their ups and downs, had their arguments and cold shoulder moments, but they came around when they thought a few days away from each other was enough to segue back to that companionable mold humans are wont to share.

He was still asleep, tangled in the throes of a fever dream.

Usagi was a big girl. She could fend for herself. She was a Sailor Senshi; not the strongest nor the fastest nor the smartest, but the glue that bound him, the Outers, and the rest of the Inners together.

_We all support the team,_ he chanted in his mind. _We all support the team. We all support the team…._

_We all support the team, one way or another…._

Mamoru sighed and closed his eyes. He sat there for a while, hunched over and agonizing like a Gothic version of Auguste Rodin's _The Thinker_ if the Grimm Brothers labored in sculpture instead of composing fairy tales. When he looked up, he saw the clock hands were pointed at 8:00.

He swore under his breath. He wasn't going to make it to class on time, not unless he left now and waded through the horrors of early morning traffic. He stood from the chair, turned off the TV, and made for the door.

His hand stopped on the knob. He glanced back at the clock.

His first class would start in a half-hour.

Mamoru scoffed. He pulled a jacket off the coat rack, swiped his keys from the end table, and threw open the door. Screw the classes. One missed day wasn't going to kill him.

He needed to think. He didn't want to be here, nor did he want to be at school. He wanted to be somewhere else.

And that somewhere was Crown Arcade.


	7. Somewhere Over the Rainbow

**Disclaimer: **All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**7.  
****Somewhere Over the Rainbow**

Homura tipped her head back and breathed as the pills slipped down her throat until all that remained was the nasty, chalky aftertaste. She let her body fall to the ground and spread her arms out. Grass bent at her fingertips, poked gingerly into the nape of her neck.

The sky was a hazy sapphire, painted with strips of fluffy white clouds. The sun bedazzled. An airliner's jets roared, soaring unseen. Traffic buzzed and honked above her on the Joban Expressway.

_I'm running low on meds again. How much do I have left?_ She lifted the bottle and shook it. Three pills jingled and jangled inside. She sighed. _I've got enough for tonight. I hope there's a pharmacy nearby. _She ran dry passing Tsukuba and had to backtrack before she got ambushed by a Nest that had materialized just as she turned the corner at the street the convenience store was on.

She had almost failed, almost succumbed to the chest pain and Old Friend Guilt. But she had vanquished them, put the barrel to the Queen's face and splashed the upside-down labyrinth with blood and eyeless faces frozen in horrific eternity. Then, after the bodies turned to ash and the maze collapsed, she 'retrieved' her medication and resumed the journey.

That was four days ago. Very little progress, if any at all, had been made. In short, Akemi Homura was nowhere close to reaching her desitination.

_You don't know when to quit, do you? Sending them after me in that many droves…the amount of energy expended alone should have killed you on the spot. I wish it did._ She studied the spiraled shield on her arm, the shield that had both saved and damned her on multiple occasions._ I wish I could do a lot of things to you, for putting us through so much hell. This time around, Madoka isn't here to stop me. _Or, she recalled with a sour taste in her mouth, the traitor.

She returned the medicine to its pocket and focused on the Soul Gem. Still dirty, but nowhere near as bad as it had been when she put some distance from Ishioka nine days prior. There were scant traces of clean energy shining gloriously like a lighthouse beacon cutting through the fog of a dark, storm-heavy night.

"How about this?" she had asked Kyubey yesterday, sweeping an arm at a scenic route peppered with Grief Seeds. It had been a long battle that pushed her body to the point it almost damn near shut down. "Does this exceed your expectations?"

The Incubator inclined his head as if in thought. "It was a very large group...but I'd be lying if I told you it's enough. In fact, it's pitiful."

"_What?_" Homura exclaimed. She marched up to Kyubey and hauled him in the air by his ear. "You lie!"

"It's true! This is barely a trickle! I'm going to need much more than this if I'm going to meet my quota."

"What sorcery is this? I've never heard of Witches amassing."

"That's because they don't. Witches may share the same objectives – such as causing humans to commit murder and suicide through their bites – but they always travel individually."

"Impossible. Witches feed on a Magi's hope and soul. How would they survive if there is only one soul and not enough hope to go around? They would fight until the last Witch is standing!"

"Well, it can't be symbiosis. Witches are a vastly heterogenous subspecies compared to their human counterparts. You're a smart girl, Homura, you of all people should know it can't be achieved."

"Then what is it?" she thundered, and she shook him. "What's the answer to this riddle?"

"Collective consciousness, or a group mind, to put it simply. Witches, like bees, correspond to a hierarchy. They have their drones, their soldiers, and a Queen that helps build their nest to provide shelter for the colony and to produce honey via pollination. But that's where the similarities end. Witches are infertile and aromantic, so there's no point in birthing younglings, not when they can extend their lifespan by devouring Puella Magi and bitten humans. There's no need to pollinate, no need to lay eggs for a time when the Queen dies and is replaced, no need to fend their territory from other bees searching for a hive to keep them warm during the winter.

"All those Witches you've fought and slain were part of a single massive supercolony, and so too was that Nest you just exterminated." There was a short pause. "Do you know what their objective is, Akemi Homura?"

"It's me," she said flatly. "They want to find and destroy me, and when I am destroyed they shall feed on me."

"And why do you suppose that is?"

"Because I am Puella Magi. I have a soul…and I have hope. A hope that dares defy space and time. A hope matched by no other. A hope…that refuses to _lie down and die._"

"Only a fool would place her entire world at stake for one missing girl. Who's to say she's d—"

_"SHE IS ALIVE!"_ Akemi Homura bellowed, and shook Kyubey even harder. "In my heart of hearts, I know she still breathes!"

The Incubator was unfazed by her roughness (and when was he ever, with those wide eyes and mockingly cheerful smile?). "I'm only stating the possibility—"

"No, you're stating an _opinion_, a gods-damned heresy! And Madoka is more than just 'one missing girl'; she is strong, she is able, and she is willing to do whatever it takes to cease this cyclical madness we Magi have to endure! If that is the reason why she is not in Mitakihara, then I will go to the ends of the earth and join Madoka in purging you and your sacrilege!"

"I'm merely doing what is asked of me," Kyubey said calmly. "It's my job. How am I to prevent entropy if I don't do it?"

"Simple," Homura huffed. "I take you with me, find Madoka, and have her wipe you off the face of existence."

"Ah, but Madoka is just another Puella Magi. If memory serves me right, she's not the Goddess she was in those…other attempts you two have made. Am I right, Akemi Homura?" He stared coolly, lazily, as a dragon that surveys its surroundings from its perch at the apex of the world. A dragon that could stretch its magnificent wings and take flight at any moment.

Homura retreated from the memory, put the heel of her free hand to her eyes and dashed the moist away before it had the chance to escape. He was right. He was right, and she couldn't deny it, no matter how much she wished right now for him to be wrong. But there was still hope, wasn't there? There was still an opportunity to change the inevitable outcome, even without the aid of the Goddess Madoka.

Nothing was true. Everything was permitted, but damn if they didn't try and make the possibilities _impossibilities_.

Could it be done? Can the future – this future – avert tragedy and change for the better?

Homura watched as a cotton-white cloud wandered in front of the sun and cast the area in twilight shadows.

_("It can be done," the Goddess Madoka had said to her in that soft-spoken timbre, except now it was deeper, smoother, belying the sudden transition from adolescence to adulthood granted by her wish. She placed a gloved hand on Homura's fevered brow and brushed damp black tresses from her eyes. Her smile was sad, but it was beautiful all the same. "We can still fix this, Homura."_

_"Maybe you can," Homura croaked weakly, "but what use do I have as you see me now? I can't feel my legs nor can I move them, and my Soul Gem" she clutched the egg-shaped jewel "it's already cracking." She tried to meet Madoka's gaze, tried to focus on her and not the illusory images seated behind her. "Forgive me. I…I didn't mean to fail you."_

_"It's okay. You did the best you could do."_

_"No, it's not okay, not when we were so close." She coughed, and she tasted the blood spattered on her lips. "Not when we almost got it right…."_

_"There's still hope." Satin-covered fingers traced along the curve of a cheek smeared in soot._

_"How is there still hope? We've tried and tried and tried, and though things are different each time, the end is always the same. Don't you see, Madoka? Look around you. No matter how hard we fight, how we much struggle, our fate remains unchanged. What awaits us is not peace…but darkness."_

_Quietly, morosely: "Homura..." Her hand removed itself and fell upon Homura's own, the one holding the cracked Soul Gem, in a firm embrace._

_All around them, Mitakihara lay in wonderful ruins. Its stunning skyscrapers and towering windmills were now a haphazard sea of blackened debris, shattered glass, and buried bodies. The sky was a churning, roiling cauldron, clouds of grey and bruised purple a wave of foam hovering forebodingly, threatening to spill its contents and drown the city whole._

_Lightning flickered on the horizon and there was a faint blast of thunder. The air was electric with ozone and decay. Birds refused to sing in this desolated land._

_Footsteps crunched gravel to dust, their stride purposeful, predatory…anticipating._

_It was getting harder to breathe, harder to stay awake…but at least Madoka was at her side. Madoka…her friend, her fellow sister, her guardian angel. Madoka, whose hands were clasped together in a facsimile of prayer, whose body and dove-like angel wings were shielding her from the rapidly approaching squall._

_Homura sighed. She wished she could find the strength to sit up and press herself against the woman. She felt gooseflesh emerge beneath her clothing, felt her limbs and teeth tremble with cold, and she wanted nothing more than to be in Madoka's arms and savor the warmth radiating from her skin like a stone fireplace while she sang her to sleep._

_What was it called again? The one they heard on the battery-powered radio when the power went out and the rain and the wind were their only source of music?_

_"Sing for me," she mumbled, so low and airy she almost couldn't catch the words. "Sing me a song…'Like Sunday Rain'…Madoka…."_

_Getting closer, louder, paces quickening—_

_Madoka bent her head and pressed her lips to bloodied knuckles. "Of course, Homura, I'd love to."_

_Running, footsteps muffled by the crash of heaven's cymbals—_

_A warm, tender light inundated from raised wings, feathers molting, feathers buoyed in humid air. It washed over her like a waterfall and pooled at the cusp of her hands, filling the damaged Soul Gem._

_Homura's heart pounded its last beats, pulsed like gunshot ricochets in deafening ears. "Madoka…what are you…?"_

_"I promise I'll sing to you," the Goddess Madoka declared with a pained smile. "I'd do anything for you…for all our friends. So…wait for me, okay? I'll come find you and give you and everyone the best performance you'll ever see."_

_The light, it was so bright, so warm. "Madoka…no, no don't do this…."_

_"Don't give up, Homura. There's still hope, I know there is. We'll be free someday. We'll keep doing this over and over again if we have to, but we'll get it right."_

_Running, footsteps muffled by the crash of heaven's cymbals—_

_"We can still make our own—"_

_SHUNK._

_Blood splashed hotly over Homura's face. "Ma-Madoka…!"_

_Dark, ruddy rivulets ran down the pale column of her throat, dripped from the tip of the blade and stained her lovely dress, but the Goddess Madoka never felt it. She smiled even wider, grinning with teeth turning pink, blinking through the rain as if there were dust in her lashes. "I-I'm c-counting on y-y-you, H-Homura. I b-believe i-i-in you."_

_"No, Madoka!"_

_"Until…we meet again."_

_"MADOKA!" )_

That was the last thing she remembered, and afterward she relented to eternal slumber. She was never even aware she had been sent back through time and space, never realized she was a Puella Magi tasked to start again from the very beginning until the traitor's deeds had already been committed and the probability this future was going to hell in a hand-basket sooner rather than later really set in.

_Can I really do this? Can I really herald the future we've long since waited for?_Sunlight wormed its way through the errant cloud and illuminated all it surveyed in irregularly placed slats. One such ray slid like a skateboarder on a rail and right in her face, prompting her to sit up and put a hand over her eyes.

_I want to believe you._

_I want to believe that we can be free._

_But…what if this time turns out the same? What if I'm too late to salvage the pieces?_

_I'm afraid, Madoka. I don't want to keep doing this. I don't want to run and fight anymore. I want to rest. I want to be free._

She looked down at her hands. They were callused, tough, scarred.

_I want to live and be happy…with all of you._

The air reeked of heady ozone, charged with friction and buzzing static charge. Reality rippled in undulating folds and folded in on itself. Animal chatter and inhuman gibberish whispered in dark, unknown corners.

Akemi Homura pushed herself to her feet. She pressed the Soul Gem into the rondel on the back of her hand. A violet light engulfed her and erupted in a shower of sparks, revealing the Magi in full armor.

She reached her hand behind her shield, and from its dimension withdrew a single-barreled, pump-action shotgun. _No one believes in the future…but I know better. For you, Madoka, and all our friends, I will believe. I will wage war…_

A dull echo signified the barrier's synchronized; the maze completely materialized. A garbled, blathering cackle announced their arrival. Nimble footprints slammed against a tessellated floor writhing with schools of fish and a murder of crows.

_AND BREAK FREE THE SHACKLES OF OUR DAMNATION!_

The first of many beasts lunged at her from out of the darkness, claws extracted and gleaming deadly silver.

Akemi Homura scoffed. She slowed time, and the beast's movements slowed.

Then she hefted the shotgun in its face and pulled the trigger.

* * *

"It's happening again." Setsuna turned from the Space-Time Door. "Luna, read me the coordinates."

The cat touched a paw to the computer screen. Numbers scrolled down a display window and quickly unscrambled the downloaded data. "Latitude 35, 94, 79, 95...and longitude 139, 97, 68, 07."

Setsuna hummed and scratched her chin, eyes transfixed on the dark-haired girl emptying her weapon on a tall, green creature that hissed and spat from a perpetually tragic moue. "That's all the way in Moriya, Ibaraki," she answered after a bout of concentration. "She should have been this way a long time ago."

"It's because of those things," said Luna. "A person walking from Moriya to Minato-ku would take nine hours, but if we analyze the time ribbon I found on August twenty-fifth" she swept her tail in front of her and injected the end of the wisp into the USB port; the computer downloaded the information and extracted it from the compressed folder, which brought up another window below the previous screen "you can see from the map she was at Ishioka. If we calculate the distance between there, Tsukuba, Moriya, and Minato-ku" her paws clacked on the keys "it would normally have taken her a grand total of seventeen hours on foot."

"Where do you think those monsters are coming from?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Lunadrone-2 hasn't detected any unusual spatial anomalies or energy signatures that can confirm they're youma." The Lunadrone was, in retrospect, a successor to the Luna-P Ball Chibi-Usa, Usagi and Mamoru's future child, had when she arrived in this era from her time. Its outward appearance was left untouched (sporting a caricatured replication of Luna's face, something that still disturbed the cat), but it utilized high-tech software components more so than ancient Lunarian magic that spanned Conjuration and Alteration to Mysticism. Setsuna had constructed Lunadrone-1 five days earlier and sent it out upon completion, where it had stopped and collected data the girl's fight in Tsukuba.

"And the girl?"

If Luna was capable of it, she would have shrugged. "We can safely assume she is most definitely not a youma. However, there is a distinct lack of human presence in this girl. Do you recall the battle in Tsukuba?" Setsuna nodded. "Even when she almost fell I couldn't sense her. I cast an advanced life detection spell on myself, thinking I was unable to feel her out because the raw amount of spiritual energy interfered with Lunadrone-1." She shook her head. "Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in her body. It was as though I was peering inside an empty husk. Except," her ears flattened, "I did feel _something_, something nigh imperceptible. I had to search more thoroughly before I found the source."

"Where was it?"

"It was on her hand, in the form of a jewel not unlike those seen on the Senshi diadem. Lunadrone-1 managed to capture a couple shots in between each time-stop." She tapped a button on the keyboard, and the printer next to the modem ejected a ribbon from the lower paper slot.

Setsuna snatched it from the air and studied the images. They were grainy and blurry, a result of constantly zooming in and keeping abreast with the girl's quicksilver movements. She saw the object of interest in a cleaner shot, a purple, magmatic hotspot with mottled black spots that reminded her of the center of an active volcano.

It also brought to mind how it bore a startling resemblance to that of a Star Seed.

_What could this be? Outside exposure would have turned it completely black, but it still retains most of its shine. So, it can't be a true Star Seed such as the ones we Sailor Senshi carry…._

_Who is this girl? She can stop and slow time at whim and possesses a crystal that resides outside her body and has not deteriorated, all without sacrificing her life in exchange. If she is not Senshi or youma or even post-rebirth Earthling, then what do we identify her as…?_

"What will you do, Setsuna?" asked Luna. "If it's as you predict…."

"It's still too early to say," said Setsuna. She let go of the wisp and regarded the girl with the egg-shaped gem and lightning flash-quick steps with heavy-lidded eyes. "She may not even come this way."

"And if she does?"

Setsuna didn't answer. She watched the battle unfold through the Space-Time Door relayed by Lunadrone-2's optics.

_If she does, it's only a matter of time before we meet._ And what happened from there, not even she could determine.


	8. IllusionS

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**8.  
Illusion(S)**

Mami awoke panting hard. She looked left and right, prodded the shadows stagnating in the room. Nothing was there. All was where it should be.

She relaxed and gazed at the ceiling. The vents rattled below the floor. The clock ticked. Birds twittered and tweeted, as merry as they come.

She turned on her side and looked at the clock. It was six, right on the mark. She sighed. She rolled away from the device, shifted under the sheets before she settled.

Time passed. The shadows retreated, the room brightening with the rise of a new day's sun.

Another sigh. She sat up, glanced at the green, digital numbers. 6:30 A.M. She stared at the blankets, kneaded the fabric between her fingers. A flick of the wrists removed them.

Her feet touched the floor. She shivered. It was cold. She pushed off the mattress and stretched. Joints popped and muscles pulled. She yawned, wide and soft and muted.

She went to the bathroom – refreshed herself, brushed her teeth, showered and toweled off.

She stared at the mirror. And stared. And stared. And stared.

She blinked, exhaled harshly. Thumb and forefinger pinched between her brow. She shook her head, gripped the edge of the sink.

She dressed. She sat at the vanity and combed her hair, curled it and tied it in familiar drill shapes. She set the brush down, grabbed the plastic sunflower clip. Fingers rubbed up and along the yellow, ovoid gem; slow, painstaking, reverent.

She smiled. She cupped it in both hands and stared at it.

A third sigh, a quiet sigh. She slid the clip in her hair and folded the metal pieces in place.

She turned on the television and made breakfast – French toast and scrambled eggs. She poured a cup of tea and sat on the _tatami_ mat. She ate.

The television was tuned in to Crossroads Channel 10. A meeting or press conference was taking place at the police station. On the television, a broad-shouldered man spoke before a wooden podium. Behind him was a lanky, rail-thin fellow with narrow slits for eyes. He looked sour, as if he had bit into a lemon and did not like the taste.

She sipped her tea. It was very warm.

"…I am inclined to believe someone is out there who knows exactly what happened on the night of August twenty-fourth," the Broad Man was saying.

"Do you mean the person who called the 119 number?" a reporter asked him.

The Broad Man looked like he didn't want to answer that question. "Indeed," he said anyway. "Unfortunately, we still don't know who she is. The women we have questioned over the week have said they were not awake the moment the attack took place."

"How do we know the caller is female?" another person asked. "What if the person is male?"

"I can assure you, Miss Usagi's guardian angel is most definitely female." This was delivered by the Thin Man, who moved to stand next to his companion. "I answered the phone and relayed the young lady's message to the available units."

"Who's to say an attack ever happened?" some man's voice called above the ruckus of flashing lights and camera clicking. "You haven't found any credible evidence that supports your claims!"

"Tsukino Usagi has been comatose for little over a week," the Broad Man rumbled. "I have seen her myself, as have the Tsukino family and Miss Usagi's acquaintances."

"You refuse to answer my question! Where is the evidence, Officer? Is there something you're hiding that could possibly incriminate the investigation?"

"How dare you!" the Thin Man snarled.

Mami hummed. She swirled the tea in its cup, stared down at the liquid tilting and whirling like a dreidel on an anchor. She couldn't look away, it was so hypnotizing.

She wanted more tea, so she drained the cup and got up to refill it.

She set the kettle back on the counter and looked out the window. The parking lot was filled with an assortment of cars, trucks, and vans, broken here and there by a moped or two. The street was barren save for a trail of scarlet leaves tumbling across the pavement. A breeze stirred a heavy sigh among the foliage, causing branches to bend and caress the brick wall marking the property's boundary.

This place…Azabu Juuban…it was…smaller, tighter.

Mitakihara was so big…but it was so…_empty_. The wind turbines and expressway overpasses could swallow you whole when you least expect it.

But not Azabu Juuban. Azabu Juuban was safe, peaceful, free of burden and responsibility….

"We are _not_ going to give up on this girl," the Broad Man was telling the gaggle of news-folk. "Mark my words; we are not going to stop until this person is caught. We will comb all of Honshu, all of Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku if we have to, but believe you me there _will be justice_. Tsukino Usagi may have only been the beginning, but we must do all we can to prevent a similar incident from happening and maintain our well-being and the safety of our children…."

And there were good people, too. People who cared, people who looked out for one another, people who made going through life that much easier.

Like Hino Rei.

Like Kaname Madoka.

The girl in the mirror raised a hand and fingered the sunflower clip.

The girl in the mirror frowned.

The girl in the mirror glared and glared, and she seethed until it seemed as though the action alone could break it, shower the counter with a million itty-bitty pieces.

Then the girl in the mirror awoke as if she had been in a daze, and she frowned once more.

Time passed.

Mami looked down into the cup. It was still full. It was cold and collecting condensation.

She glanced at the clock on the TV. It was a quarter to eight. She sighed.

She took the cup by the handle, held it over the sink, and tipped the contents down the drain.

* * *

If Mamoru were in a better mood, he would have taken his car and taken ten minutes out of his morning to get to Crown Arcade. Common sense would have prevailed at any other point in time and compel him to stop moping, there's nothing you can do, and save yourself the trouble of walking a half-hour from the suburbs all the way to downtown Azabu Juuban. Get with the times, his conscience said! People don't walk no more, it's the way of the dodo! Why ya gotta be that way, Mamo my man? Sit your can behind the wheel, key the ignition, and burn that fossil fuel! Burn that rubber! Screw the gas prices; this oughta make you feel like eighty-thousand yen again!

Mamoru told his conscience to stuff it, he wanted to walk, thank you very much. He didn't think he could focus driving, rather take to the street and travel the old-fashioned way without posing a threat to pedestrians despairing Usagi's invisible stalker was in their midst at this moment. Besides, it had been ten days since he'd last taken a good stroll. Might as well make it last while the weather was still tolerable.

He was in no hurry. Crown Arcade wouldn't open for another hour, but Motoki may or may not already be getting the place prepped for when customers started coming and the money rolling. At least he was keeping himself preoccupied, what with the pay raise he received upon being promoted to assistant store manager the previous year. A full-time position, longer hours, bigger checks, and so many other miscellaneous things to whittle the day away; unfortunately, that left Motoki with very little time to go visit Usagi. Mamoru wished he had his friend's kind of schedule; school and work could do so much until his thoughts meandered to his girlfriend and the helplessness stuffed among the stress-induced Styrofoam package peanuts.

He passed into the downtown area, wove in and out of the foot traffic on the streets. He lifted his head and was welcomed by frayed, yellow tape and a lone black-and-white sedan. He didn't dare draw closer, but he noticed there was no one behind the wheel.

He slowed his pace and allowed his gaze to drift. So this was it, huh? Four Guardians Park, named after the Four Saint Beasts: the Black Tortoise of the North, the Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermillion Bird of the South, and the White Tiger of the West. Each represented a direction, season, and was distinguished by unique characteristics. The tortoise represented strength, the dragon water and rainfall, the bird justice, and the tiger bravery. The few times he and Usagi came here on dates, he recalled seeing granite sculptures of these animals standing sentinel around the park's perimeter at their respective locations.

Why didn't they protect Usagi? Why didn't they materialize and drive the attacker away? Surely the Four Saint Beasts had to exist in some shape or form, even on a metaphysical plane. If they had protected her, she wouldn't be bedridden in the hospital, wouldn't have tubes in her arms and belly and Gods only know where else while friends and family and strangers alike held vigil like the Three Wise Men bearing their gifts on the journey to Bethlehem. She would be at his side, arms locked around his as they walked the stone path or dozed off on a bench as they basked in the sunlight filtering through the trees.

She could make the world brighter with a simple smile.

She could gather the shards of wounded hearts and put them back together again without the need for tape or thread or super glue.

She could….

Mamoru couldn't bear it. He tore his eyes from the park and willed his legs and feet to keep moving.

She couldn't do any of those things.

He kept to himself, hands in pockets and head lowered. He didn't bother to pay attention to the relative transition from quiet suburbia to raucous downtown until the grumble of engines caressed his eardrums and the number of pedestrians increased like a network of rainbow waterways interconnecting but otherwise flowing in different directions. He trudged along as if he were a man without a dream, a man who has little hope of finding his way home when he realizes he is lost and knows not where to go. He was only aware he had entered downtown when he stopped at the crosswalk and waited for the signal to cross to the other side to switch over.

After the light changed and he walked the distance to the next sidewalk was Crown Arcade in sight. Not much had changed in the five years it had opened – well, there _was_ that incident in '11 when this guy was doing fifty in a forty-mile zone and he crashed his car into one of the building's windows because he floored the accelerator instead of the brakes by accident, but overall it was still the same place (plus a new window, but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference since the staff maintained the arcade every day).

Mamoru rolled his sleeve up and checked his watch. It was twenty past eight; that had to be a new record. Maybe he should have wallowed in his misery a little more, ah but no, he was a patient man through and through. It wouldn't do to break character and complain of long stretches in time with nothing to occupy his addled nerves but to stand outside the entrance and people-watch while growing increasingly agitated and impatient. Rudeness got you nowhere in life.

So, minus the addled nerves, agitation and impatience, Mamoru leaned up against the wall and settled in for when Motoki would unlock the doors and flip the SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED sign to OPEN. Motoki himself was bustling about inside, counting yen bills in one of the many cash registers (a procedure, his friend explained, that had to do with dropping money in a safe when the register exceeded four to eight thousand yen). Mamoru rapped his knuckles on the glass and flashed Motoki a wave, which the man returned when he realized who it was making that sound.

Mamoru turned away, but something caught his periphery as he was about to begin the ages-old waiting game. "What's this?" He twisted his body around until he was directly facing the window. "_Puella Magi Magicka: Return to Zero_?" It was a poster advertising a new arcade game, a beat-'em-up co-op "considered to be a spiritual successor to _"Sailor V: Soldier of Justice!"_" with "intense blood-pumping action" preceded by _"Marvel vs. Capcom 2"_ and the _Metal Slug_ franchise. The image featured five white silhouettes, each holding a weapon and striking various poses. The backdrop betrayed a dark and sinister funnel cloud circling above the ruins of a city. In the center of the funnel cloud was a beam of light and against loomed a large shape that looked hauntingly like (Mamoru took a moment to recollect his sparse video game knowledge) Copy-X's final form from _"Rockman Zero"_. He had never noticed it on his visits here during the past week, so the arcade cabinet had to have been brought in while he was busy with school and work and driving to the hospital.

He noted with shamefaced amusement that the _"Puella Magi"_ poster was blocking most if not all of the _"Sailor V"_ advert. He choked back the laughter clenching at his gut. Minako was going to be _pissed_ when she saw this. She'd vent to Motoki for sure, maybe slap him over the head a couple times with that foam _"Minecraft"_ pickaxe she bought online if he told her he wasn't there when the game was delivered or some other excuse he was horrible at making. Poor guy, he couldn't lie his way out of a cardboard box. Mamoru uttered a hasty prayer for his friend's safety.

He could feel the smile tugging the corners of his lips. A small smile, but a smile nonetheless. It had been a while since he had last done that, he recalled.

He needed that. And he wanted more of it. It was what Usagi would have wanted.

The thought of Usagi resonated within him an ache in his chest, but he didn't waver. Didn't he tell his reflection earlier to chin up? Of course, how could he forget! But yet, his suspicions toward Officer Teguchi remained.

That killed his good mood. Mamoru huffed, leaned against the glass and closed his eyes—

_("…Know that from the moment you made the contract you have sacrificed everything," said the white cat-thing. "This is the life you lead now. The life you lived before is gone. But be happy you are still alive! Not all girls who become Puella Magi survive the wrath of a Witch's hunger."_

_"Alive?" the redhead thundered. She snatched the thing by the neck and bared her teeth at its smiling face. "We're fucking zombies! You took our souls as payment for our wishes!"_

_"I asked you, Kyouko, as I've asked the others the same question as I posed to all girls before accepting the contract. Do you remember what that question is?"_

_"If I were to sell my soul to change one thing in this world, what would it be?"_

_"And each of you has told me what you wanted, the one desire you cherished with all your heart. You asked it, and in exchange for agreeing to combat the Witches I granted it."_

_"I didn't think you were being serious about the whole 'sell-your-soul' thing! None of us did!"_

_"You didn't ask. Besides, look at how well things came out! Sayaka wished for her friend to get better, now he's back in school and healthier than he was before the accident. Homura wished for her heart condition to go away, and it did; she doesn't have to take medication anymore. Madoka and Mami wished for strength to fight and protect the weak and their lives are no longer filled with pain and loneliness. And you—"_

_"Don't. Start," the redhead – Kyouko – hissed._

_"You wished for all the people in your neighborhood to come to your father's church and believe in him."_

_"He knew it was magic! He knew it wasn't the Gods who answered his prayers!"_

_"But everyone believed him, didn't they? They believed him and loved him for spreading the teachings of the risen—"_

_"HE KILLED THEM ALL!" she roared, and she squeezed the cat-thing and shook him. "He killed them and killed my baby sister, my sister whose face I'm starting to forget! He set the only place I called home on fire and died laughing!"_

_"I'm sorry it happened," said the thing, "but you're still here. Aren't you glad you're here, Sakura Kyouko?"_

_"BASTARD!" She smashed its face against the alley wall, drew her arm back and smashed it into the brick again. And again. And again, until she could no longer see through the wet, crimson film. "YOU BASTARD! YOU BASTARD! YOU _BASTARD!" _She felt them tug and yank at her, their bodies wrapped around like a carnal embrace. Arms encircling her waist, hands clamped on an elbow, fingers and nails biting skin__—)_

Mamoru groaned and clutched his pounding head. He felt his gorge rise in his throat. His knees buckled and he put a hand to the wall to brace himself—

_("Stop it, Kyouko!" There was a tug on her left arm, desperate and rough. "Let him go, you're killing him!"_

_She wheeled so fast and so sharply, and she caught a brief glimpse of Sayaka – the blue-haired girl – before her fist struck and Sayaka was sprawled in a heap on the ground. "Don't be a FOOL! He deserves it for all that he's done to us! If he hadn't waltzed in and made us the way we are, we would still be human! Still be mortal!" She glared at the bloodied cat-thing with its crushed skull and punctured face. Then she lifted her own dripping hand for the girls to see, and they wilted in despair._

_"We would still be free!")_

His stomach clenched, unclenched. Heart hammering away in its xylophone cage, pulse racing, sweat beading a trail down the curve of his jaw.

_Oh Gods I think I'm going to be sick—_

"Mamoru!" a voice boomed in his ear. Hands on his shoulders, the shifting of air marking a new presence. "Mamoru! What's wrong?"

_Let go,_ his mind screaming. _Let go._

_Let go of the freaking wall!_ Wait, that wasn't him….

"Mamoru!"

"What?" he shouted. He spun about and prepared to shove whoever was holding him. Then he saw and he froze in mid-action, and his ire cooled like water on lava. "Motoki?"

"Mamoru?" the man asked. He dropped his hands to his sides, looking like he had just seen a third eye open in the middle of his friend's forehead. "Are you okay?"

"Y-Yeah," he choked. "I think so…."

"Are you sure? You don't look too hot."

"I'm fine, Motoki. At least, I think I am. I" he swallowed thickly "I don't know what came over me. I was waiting for you to open the arcade. I was standing by this wall" he gestured to the glass and the _Puella Magi Magica_ poster "and all of a sudden I…no. No, it's not real. None of it is."

"What's not real?"

"Sailor V's not real, therefore Puella Magi aren't either. It's just a game. There's no talking cat-thing, no Witches, no soulless magi…."

"Mamoru," said Motoki, steady and concerned, "maybe you should go home. You know, lie down and relax. Take it easy."

"What am I saying? You must think I'm going crazy." He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. "It must be all that television. I've been watching too much of it lately. All you hear on TV are murders, rapes, burglary, job cuts; oh and there's Usagi, who everyone is talking about every minute of every gods-forsaken day, but what am I supposed to do about it? What can anyone do about it? There's nothing we can do to help her—"

"Mamoru!" Motoki clapped his hands on Mamoru's shoulders, hard and powerful like a mallet.

"What?" Mamoru snapped, voice pitching high at the end.

"It's going to be okay."

"Huh?"

"I know it's taking a while. I know people are getting angry. I am, too, but…everything will turn out alright." His features softened and his grip slackened. "It may be some time before we get answers, but the police will find them. I know they will. So, have a little faith in them? It's not going to be solved in one day. But it will. Eventually."

Mamoru deflated. "…Maybe you're right. I'm sorry," he removed Motoki's hands with joints flaked in rust, "I didn't mean to go off on you."

"Hey, no need to be sorry. It's in our nature to freak out every now and then." The good humor in his smile vanished, replaced with puzzlement. "But…what does _Puella Magi Magica_ have to do with Usagi?"

Mamoru hesitated. How should he put it? "Motoki," he began, "you know of my ability, right? The psychometry?"

"You mean the one that makes you see and do all sorts of things when coming into physical contact with an object?"

"Yeah. I mean the psychometry, not that game and…look I'll tell you, but I seriously doubt you'll believe me."

"…Okay," said Motoki. "I'm not sure where this is going to lead…but I'll give it a shot. Why don't we take this conversation inside?"

"That would be a great idea, Motoki," Mamoru replied. He didn't care what time it was, how long he'd been struggling keeping his breakfast down and his sanity in check. Relief was flooding through his veins like a shot of extra-strength performance enhancer. "In fact, it's the best thing I've heard all day."

_But the worst is yet to come,_ a voice whispered silkily in his mind. _This is just the beginning._

No. No, it wasn't. This was as bad as it was going to get. Nothing more.

_You're kidding yourself if you believe that_. _It's early, but give it time. The day will come. Hell will be more than happy to remind you of what – and who - is at stake._

_And how would you know?_ He spat as he entered Crown Arcade. _What are you, psychic?_

_Better. I'm a repeat offender._


	9. Where Everybody Knows Your Name

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**9.  
****Where Everybody Knows Your Name  
(Our Troubles Are All the Same) **

Mamoru nearly tripped over his feet. What did she just say?

_What do you mean 'repeat offender'?_ He forced his legs to continue their motion as they guided him toward a bar sectioned off with rope dividers at the back of the arcade. He steadied his smile's trembling. _I'm talking to you!_

No response.

_Answer me!_

Nothing. The voice, _Sakura Kyouko's voice_, had receded.

His fists clenched in his pockets. _Get a hold of yourself, Mamoru! That couldn't have been her! It's just your imagination, that's it! And stress! Boy howdy, how can you _not_ forget about the stress, you daft worrywart?_ He took a seat at the counter, and forgoing proper etiquette slouched forward and rested his elbows on the surface; he didn't feel like being the calm, collected _senpai/onii-chan_ people looked up to. "I need a drink," he told Motoki.

"What would you like?"

"Here." He dug around and dropped a couple wrinkled bills. "Give me some scotch, cask edition."

Motoki grimaced. "We don't sell hard liquor here."

"What about that bottle of Zinfandel? The one you opened on Golden Week, you still got that?"

"Yeah, but it's not much. There's only enough for a small glass."

"Hit me. And keep the change."

Motoki snatched the cash and slipped them into the register. He took the key hanging round his neck, bent low, and opened a cabinet that was under the counter. He came back up with the bottle of sparkling red wine in one hand and a chute glass in the other. "So," Motoki began warily, "what's on your mind? What did you see with this psychometry?" He offered the filled glass as one would hold a stick over a dead body.

"I don't think even you would make sense of it," said Mamoru as he accepted the object.

"Well we won't know 'til we try, right? Who knows, I might be able to help."

A sigh. "I suppose you're right." He took a sip and smacked his lips. "Stop me if I'm going too fast."

So he recounted to his friend the visions he had witnessed, of the girls who were at one moment enjoying themselves at an arcade center and in the next coiled in suffocating tension in a dank, shadowed alley. He told Motoki of Sakura Kyouko, the girl who he saw through her eyes the world, how her speaking to the cat-thing galvanized her to repeatedly smash it against the brick wall until its skull cracked and blood and spinal fluid caked her callused hand that she displayed to those same girls as if it were a trophy.

"And get this," Mamoru added, and leaning forward he tacked on in a hushed, conspiratorially voice, "She said she was a 'repeat offender'. Can you believe the gall she has to say such a thing? She could be the person who attacked Usako, and no one but us is aware of it!"

"I don't know," Motoki said. "It all sounds very farfetched. If you were a writer for Sunrise, you could opt to write a grim-dark version of _Lyrical Nanoha_ and it would be an instant hit."

"Ha, ha, ha. No really, what do you think? Is she"— he glanced around, wondering if the place was still empty (it was), then continued with, "the one we're looking for? She _did_ say she was a repeat offender."

Motoki shuffled from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. "Well if that's the case, then we've got a problem. Where exactly were these events taking place at?"

"I couldn't tell you. I didn't recognize the area, but the buildings are much larger than they are here. I even saw a couple wind turbines."

"Wind turbines, huh. There aren't many places around here that use them." Motoki scratched absently at the stubble-flecked chin. "Let me think...wait, there is _one_ city. It's in the northeast, a little ways out from here. What was it called again…?"

_Tell him Mitakihara._

Mamoru nearly spat wine all over the countertop. _What—_

_Tell the Canadian it's Mitakihara._

_Motoki's not Canadian!_ He scolded, brow twitching. He swallowed and felt the wine dribble down his throat.

"…It's on the tip of my tongue," Motoki was mumbling under his breath.

"Do you mean Mitakihara?" Mamoru suggested.

Motoki snapped his fingers. "There we go! Good ole Mitakihara, leading city of the most up-to-date technology and latest pop culture trends! I almost gave up trying to conjure the name. It's a good thing you're here, Mamoru!"

_Yes. Yes it is. You're a good boy, Chiba Mamoru. I should like to give you a treat._

_Oh, shut up._ He rolled his eyes._ I'm not a dog._

_What would you like? Do you like _taiyaki_?_

_It's okay, I guess._

_Well, do you or don't you?_

_I've only had it a couple times. I don't eat snacks very often._

_Then ask for pocky. Chocolate pocky._

_I'm not hungry._

_Ask him anyway._

_And I should ask him, why?_

_Because it's my favorite and because I _said so_. Or would you rather I show you another time I killed that_ 'poor, defenseless'_ putty-tat?_

_Another time?_ Good Gods, he didn't want to go through it again. She could annoy him all she wanted, she could do anything. _(I'll do whatever you say, Just don't make me watch it over and over and—)_

_Ask for some pocky. Go on._ _I'm not going to trick you. I promise._

_Are you sure?_

_Just ask for it._

_Okay okay, don't be so testy._ "I'll take some pocky, Motoki. Make it chocolate." He fetched out the yen and a moment later the box was in front of him. "Thanks, man."

_Yeah, thanks a million._ _Now go ahead and put it away, Mamoru. Let's save it for later. _Mamoru stared down at the box, uncertain. _It's a box of pocky, man. It won't bite. Pick it up._ He stared at it some more, then with great reluctance put his palm on top of it. Nothing happened.

_See, what did I tell you? I kept my word._

_You're just playing nice._

_And you're being paranoid._

_Because I know what you are, and as soon as I see your face on the streets I'm calling the police._

Motoki recognized the faraway glaze in his friend's eyes. "Mamoru, what's wrong—"

Mamoru made a shushing sound and put a finger to his lips. Then he listened.

A derisive bark of laughter resounded. _Call the police? On me? Where are you gonna find me, huh? Where would you look? Don't say shit when you have nothing to back it up!_

_They _will_ find you. And if they don't, then rest assured, Sakura Kyouko, _I _will._ His grip tightened round the glass, knuckles flaring white-hot.

_You're such a dumbass,_ the voice grumbled. _For a guy studying to get a PhD, you're not very smart._

_What did you say?_

_Screw that head of yours back on and wake up! You're so worked up about your girlfriend's condition you can't even think straight! Hell, you're so damn set on locking my ass behind bars when you don't even know who I am!_

_But you said you're a repeat offender, so that must mean—_

_I am not a criminal. I've stolen food, stolen money, and beaten the crap out of people for saying the wrong things, but I am far from it. I would never stoop to that level._

_Then if you're not a criminal, what are you?_

_I told you, I'm a repeat offender. And, if I go by what I'm reading, so are you._

The frown on Mamoru's brow steepened. What the hell was she talking about? She didn't know him like he didn't know—

A wave of cold, undiluted dread stole at his breath. No…she didn't mean….

_You're just like me,_ she whispered in awe. _No, that's not true. You're like us. All of you. _A tiny, mirthless giggle. _You even have similar contractors._ _It's as though the Fates have brought us together. __Except…._

_Except…? _She did not respond. _Except what, Kyouko?_ No answer. His mind was eerily quiet. He expelled a noiseless breath. "She's gone."

"What did she say?" Motoki asked quietly.

"She said" he peered into the chute glass, studying the befuddled countenance staring back "she said she's a repeat offender but at the same time not a criminal." He looked at his friend curiously. "How does that make sense?"

Motoki shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. The way you – she – put it is like a gambler saying he's not addicted when it's clear to those who know him tell him otherwise. Maybe this Kyouko person is in denial."

Mamoru nodded. "Maybe. Or…maybe she's telling the truth. I don't know her, and I never met her in person." He finished off the wine and pushed the glass toward Motoki. "We can't prove she attacked Usagi. 'If there isn't a body, then there is no proof the person is dead', so the saying goes."

"That's not always the case. Look at that one trial in America not too far back, of that one mother accused of killing her little girl. The jury found her not guilty, but almost everyone nationwide believed otherwise. They didn't need the defense telling them the child accidently drowned in the pool or the grandfather having allegedly played a part in hiding the body. They connected Dot A with Dot B and agreed upon the conclusion the prosecution arrived at, even if some of us are aware that the real story may never be told."

"Do you think we'll ever learn what went on between Usagi and her assailant?" Why it _had_to be Usagi? If this person was a new enemy taking a page or two from Galaxia when she had him hunted down for his Golden Star Seed?

"At the rate things are going? Honestly, it's very hard to say. You'd think a lot would happen in nine, ten days."

"Well we can't just start point fingers at the police and blame them for not trying. Azabu Juuban is only one city in a jurisdiction of other cities. Teguchi and Kenba and the rest of them" and here Mamoru swallowed back the bitter taste accumulating on his tongue "they're all we've got." _And if they can't do it, what good are the chances if I and the Sailor Senshi take it upon ourselves?_

"Point taken," Motoki snorted. "But not everyone is going to think the same thing. Even if Usagi's case doesn't become high-profile, people are going to be watching the police like hawks. The longer it draws out, the less amount of knowledge they can procure, the more impatient folk will get. And when that happens…."

He let it linger, but Mamoru understood the implications. The trial in the States had pissed everyone off so much they thirsted for blood and iron-fisted justice, and that had taken _three years_ for the emotional dam to burst. How long would it take for the fuse in Usagi's family to diminish before they communicated with thinly veiled threats and fisticuffs?

Probably much sooner than anyone can anticipate.

He drained the remaining contents and licked his lips. He stared at the counter for a few seconds, then looked at Motoki and said, "You got another bottle back there?"

"No, man. That was all I had."

"Damn." He set the glass down and slid it forward into Motoki's waiting hands. "I hope I didn't take too much of your time."

"Nah, it's cool. The head honcho's not coming in 'til noon, so I've got the run of the place until then."

"Still got work to do, I bet."

"Yeah," Motoki sighed dramatically. "Oh well, the paycheck will be impressive." He waggled his eyebrows playfully.

Mamoru smirked. "When has it never?"

"Aha, there he is!" Motoki applauded, smiling widely. "There's the Mamo-chan I know and love!"

"Dear Gods, man, don't call me that. It's cute when Usagi says it, but coming from you it's just creepy."

Motoki busted out laughing. "I figured you'd say that." He held a fist up to Mamoru. "Put 'er there, tiger. If you're ever in trouble, you can count on me. Friends gotta stick together no matter what, am I right?"

Mamoru chuckled. "Too right." He made his hand into a fist, and both men bumped knuckles. "I know this doesn't change the things going on…but I feel a little better. Thanks, Motoki."

"No problem. Ah, here come our first customers. You'll have to excuse me, Mamoru. Duty calls." He deposited the wine bottle and glass and slid from behind the counter into the lobby.

Mamoru waved a dismissive hand. "It's still early. I think I'll stick around for a while. You know, to catch my bearings on everything."

"You can stay as long as you like; you and the rest of the girls. My doors are always open to you."

"I'll make sure I pass the word on when I see them." By then Motoki was already engaged in conversation with the customers, gesticulating as if he were giving a lecture at a school auditorium. That was fine with Mamoru. He had other, more important things on his plate.

Like Sakura Kyouko and her 'repeat offender' comment. Did that make her a post-rebirth earthling? She had mentioned the Senshi shared contractors similar to one she was in connection to. If indeed the Fates had brought all of them together, did that make her a Sailor Soldier as well? And who was her contractor? Mamoru was aware the felines from the planet Mau were renowned druids and shamans who made pacts with elementals and ancestral spirits, but he had never encountered any other Mau-cat aside from Luna, Artemis, and their future daughter Diana in this life or in the previous.

Then again, the Moon was a melting pot of alien races both sentient and sapient: cultures that became one with the earth and the stars, cultures that carved totems from trees grown and nurtured from mana, cultures that offered sacrifices of flesh and blood to shape-shift into primordial, animal forms. These were things Mamoru recalled in phantom wisps, borne from dreams – memories – of a time ancient and forgotten, when the Kingdom was in its Golden Age and its alliance with Earth was not fractured by suspicion, prejudice, and, ultimately, war.

So what did this all mean? Since she had a contractor and was already in the know about all there was to learn about Chiba Mamoru and his friends, what did that make her? A friend? An enemy? Or a bystander waiting for the perfect moment to step onto the center stage?

Mamoru drummed his fingers. Except, she had said. Except what? What was different about her than him and the girls?

He hummed low in his throat. He reached down and patted the box of chocolate pocky still sitting on the counter.

No images, no voices, no sound. Nothing.

He sighed. Maybe if he hadn't been such an ass to her…but he had the feeling she wasn't going to tell him anytime soon, regardless of his behavior. She sounded like that kind of girl.

True to his word, Mamoru stayed at Crown Arcade a couple hours, having small-talk with Motoki and customers young and old; and all the while he wondered how things would play out in the days to come.


	10. CHRONOMANTIQUE

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**10.  
****CHRONOMANTIQUE**

"So," Kino Makoto tentatively began as her eyes followed Minako's automatic, ceaseless turning, "how much longer you think she's going to be at this?"

"It's been twenty minutes," Mizuno Ami noted. She removed her gaze from the clock and joined her friend at her side. "I doubt Minako is okay, even if she's insisted time and again she is so."

"Your mom's not gonna be happy when she sees how flat that patch of lawn has gotten. Who knows," Makoto joked, "maybe she won't notice the difference. You did cut it the other day."

"Mother has a very keen sense of perception. If she can find Wally in half the time Minako makes her revolutions, you can bet she'll spot it."

"I wonder how well she'd do if we put her in a room with a hawk and have them go through a bunch of _I Spy_ books. What do you think?"

"I'm wondering how that's relevant to Minako."

"C'mon, guess. Who would spot the most objects, your mom or the hawk?"

Ami sighed. "Well, as much as I love my mother I don't think she could win. Hawks can see up to a far greater distance and their visual acuity is eight times stronger than that of a human's. It would be like trying to swim upstream against a current traveling in the opposite direction."

"Really? I never thought of it that way."

"It is the way it is. What are you trying to get at?" Ami watched as Minako plopped down on the lawn and laid her head on her knees, appearing as though she were sulking. Artemis was at her side, ears folded back and whiskers drooping sadly. "I'm not following your analogy."

"I'm saying if we don't do something about Minako making circles in the grass, Miss Saeko's going to sink her talons into her and tear her limb from limb. And Miss Saeko can give the devil a run for his money when she's angry." Makoto shuddered. "She's so scary when she's like that. I'm glad you didn't take after her in that department." She laughed nervously and rubbed her arms. Ami glared at her, but said nothing.

Makoto exhaled a weary, drawn-out sigh. She watched from the window, and so did Ami, as Minako proceeded to lie on her back and put her arms behind her head. "Should we go as one?"

Ami nodded. "I think that would be a good idea. It's better than having one of us go alone. I can probably pick them up on the scanner."

"No need to. I can sense them just fine," Makoto jabbed a finger at her temple, grinning. "Think you can handle them?"

"It's not so much different from Martian technology." She turned to the door. "I'll see what I can do. But if it's timed or motion-activated—"

"Don't worry. I've got your back." Makoto offered her a thumbs-up. "We Jovians understand the earth better than any other planet. Well, except the Old Terran Kingdom. They had some pretty swift spotters and digouters, as far as I can recall."

"I just hope Minako is okay," Ami said quietly. "It's easy when you're following someone, but to be suddenly thrust into the position to lead…it's a whole different story." She put her hand on the doorknob and, with a reassuring nod from Makoto, turned it.

* * *

Thousands of years ago, in a previous life, Aino Minako was a hunter. The details were vague and distorted like a rain-splattered windshield, but there was enough information to provide a somewhat understandable chronicle of what had brought her to this point in her eighteen years of existence.

Minako squinted against the sun but continued to stare at the sky. Her first memory was standing to attention in Castle Magellan, shoulders squared and back ramrod straight as Artemis – then human – relating to her the contents of a mission she was to undertake. She had been nervous, apprehensive, and was unable to keep both feet planted on the floor without the other fidgeting, but she couldn't determine whether or not this mission was important or had been her first. A black gyrfalcon was perched in the nook of the room they were in, and she felt comforted and secure when she had chanced to meet its wild, impassive gaze. His name was Illidan, and next to Artemis he was her constant companion, her faithful brother-in-arms.

She was Princess Venus and she had enrolled in the planetary army to help fight against a darkness festering on the Moon Kingdom, an ancient evil from another dimension called Metalia. She was placed among a group of youths who were also hunters, boys and girls with tattooed bears, armored dogs, and horned drakes. There were other youths who were not hunters: warriors blessed with the strength of oxen, magi branded with marks of the arcane and glowing with mana stored in their bellies, rogues that could blend into the shadows and strike at the enemy with nary a sound, and many more who were of a different class. Together they were the 19th Cohort of the Venusian Royal Forces, one hundred strong and willing to sacrifice their lives for the safety of everyone in the Solar System that tried to live and prosper in a war threatening to boil over.

There were other memories, brief as a lightning strike and swift as hurricane-force winds. Grainy slideshows filmed in sepia and cracked with age. One was of the Cohort bringing up the rear as the 108th Strike Battalion charged across the blackened forest, steel slipping a farewell kiss to leather as swords flashed into the air and the sound of battle rang lustily throughout the settling twilight. She was racing to the epicenter, shadowed by a massive war elephant with blunderbuss in hand and Illidan cawing in her ear. Sweat ran cataracts between her eyes, heart pumping luscious hellfire in her veins.

Another fragment, another battle. People were fighting, people were dying. Minako was setting bear traps enchanted with wyvern venom and Neptunian naga frost glands. It was created crudely, hooked with needle-thin redstone wires planted along a mile-wide radius that, when tripped, launched the darts from its turrets. It would paralyze the enemy for five minutes max; enough time for motion sensors to spill clouds of the blue mist, freeze them in place, and have the mages or warriors make quick work of them.

Same time, different area. A squall was rolling in from the north, lightning splitting corpse grey clouds and thunder snarling after. The tide was relentless and unforgiving. Artemis was mobbed, his mana reserves run dry; one man against ten youma with nothing but a shortsword and buckler his only aid. In front of him, she and the White-Haired Man traded blows, steel clenching steel, spell canceling spell. His name was Kunzite, a brigadier general serving His Majesty the Prince Endymion of Terra, or so the report described him. He ripped from him the sash of medals and honors and deserted the Kingdom, lured with promises of power and renown from a disgraced warlock Luna Intel 7 learned was called Beryl. Nicknamed 'White Tiger of the Prairie' for his hard-hitting, brutal swordsmanship, he was hailed as one of four heroes who rallied together loyalist forces in the Battle of Shepherd's Hill and reclaimed the holy ground from Metalia's fel army. He fought as true as his name declared, breaking through her defenses with strikes that vibrated in her wrists and up her arms like a tuning fork, fighting tooth and claw to push her back and into the frothing mass of demon flesh. But she would not give in. She strained and she bled and she was beginning to crumble, but she would not allow the traitor passage. She would protect and she would retaliate, for Artemis and Illidan and all who had fallen.

Flash! Slipping in and out of consciousness, hot with fever and shivering with cold, mocking victory. "She's been poisoned," the nurse tells Artemis in hushed whisper. "What kind of poison?" he asks, fear tangling knots in his throat. "The worst kind," says the nurse with a shake of her head. "What would that be?" presses Artemis. "Grim blight," says the nurse. "The kind that strikes without a second suspicion. If the couriers are ambushed and the antidote is contaminated, then there is no hope. She will fade like the rest." "Damn that Beryl!" Artemis curses, nails dredging half-moon trenches in enclosed fists. "Damn Metalia! Damn them and their forsaken ilk!"

Flash! Rising from her cot, taking tentative steps as she shakily goes over to the rack and hugs the blade's pommel into callused hands. "You're still weak," Artemis admonishes her gently. "You've yet to fully recover." "I can't stay here," she answers defiantly. "I can't. Not while the Negaverse continues to stalk among us." "Mina." "I don't care what happens to me. I need to be out there. I have to help. You can't stop me."

Flash! The Cohort's leader has fallen from the blight and chaos ruled among the ranks, a snake without its head. What are we going to do? The Negaverse outnumbers us twenty to one! We need to retreat, call for reinforcements! No, we must surrender! We don't stand a chance! "THERE IS A CHANCE!" she calls out. Artemis tries to pull her away, wants to tell her what she's doing is brave and foolish and suicidal; but she hauls herself up on the outcrop, draws out her sword, and points it beyond their line of sight where the enemy waits. "Our numbers may not be many, our strength crippled and unequal, but our will to survive is just as strong as Metalia's! As long as our hearts continue to beat, there is still hope! THE WAR CAN STILL BE WON!"

Flash! "Illidan, no!" She bore the gyrfalcon in her arms, not caring that she was knee-deep in mud and in the heart of youma territory. An arrow protruded from Illidan's chest and blood stained the barbed metal head sunk into his plumage. Tears spilled and cut through the soot and blood caked on her cheeks. "Stay with me, Illy! Don't go! DON'T LEAVE ME!"

Flash! "…we of the Seat of Shukra award you, Private Mina Aphrodi, this honorary medal, for your outstanding courage and valor displayed in our darkest hour…." She felt the silk ribbon slide over her hair and rest on her perspiring neck. She exchanged bows with the Prime Minister and saluted, smile bright and chest swelling with pride. The medal weighed cold and heavily.

Flash! "…being transferred to the Ninth Legion stationed on Luna at Selene Point," Artemis somberly says. "LI:5 has confirmed a five-hundred percent increase in terrorist activity, portals popping up all across the globe." He ceases pacing, unbuttons the top buttons of his uniform, sighs. "It's getting bad, Mina. It may not sound like it, but Queen Serenity's running out of options. Reinforcements can only hold for so long. The strength of Metalia and Beryl combined…if this keeps on…."

_If this keeps on_, Minako echoed dully, mouth falling the same applied to Usagi, if Usagi didn't wake up soon, what would happen to the Sailor Senshi? To Usagi? What would happen if she never woke up? What then?

At her peripheral vision, Artemis's tail slashed a worrying pendulum through the grass. Back and forth, back and forth, like a planet's unstoppable axis.

Not long thereafter she was relocated, and it was at Selene Point she saw the wholesale extent of the Negaforce's destruction. The land surrounding the royal family's castle, Millennium Hold, and the Sea of Serenity was still as lush and green due to the All-Defense Barrier activated via the Eternity Main System, but everything outside it – everything as far as she could see through the telescope Artemis always carried on him – had been razed. The earth was dry and scorched, the trees broken and blackened like singed candle wicks. The air shimmered with heat and smoke rose in spiraling columns over the horizon, so thick and dark it blotted out the eternal night sky.

To Minako, it appeared as though the End Times was finally at hand. _(And it had, the countdown had begun, but she was unaware of it. None of them were.)_

There was hardly if any fighting at all while residing within Millennium Hold. Beryl's warlocks worked diligently to break through the All-Defense Barrier, and more than once their youma minions managed to breach it and make a mad dash toward the castle. Queen Serenity's wizards retaliated in response, quashing the saboteur as quickly as they could before it could cross the drawbridge and cause irreparable damage to the building…or worse, the royal family.

As the war progressed, so did the attempts. Minako's memory of that time was extremely vague, almost nonexistent like a word left blank on an exam. The only instance she could recall lending assistance to the Queen's army was when Beryl herself summoned a pit lord from Metalia's dimension, the Negaverse. Information dredged up by Serenity's turncoats revealed it to be a towering, mechanical beast known only as a fel reaver, and it was making the inevitable march toward Selene Point in an effort to destroy the force-field and lay waste to the most important base in all the Solar System. As the pit lord was bound to the physical world, Queen Serenity had pulled her trump card: a group of the most elite and magically inclined soldiers she had personally reviewed and handpicked, a group simply christened Enchant Sect, or E-Sect. They were to step through the barrier and set up a grid-work of hexes and traps along the perimeter and neutralize the threat when it arrived.

They were fast, very fast. Minako shifted through the haze and unveiled a fragment, an intense scene of herself tearing hide and tail across the battlefield as the shadow of the pit lord's smoking foot dropped like a bomb. Screams assailed her eardrums and the earth wept blood, sweat, and oil. Her heart begged to burst from her bosom. It was one of the few times she was really, truly afraid to die.

She survived. She didn't know how. She just _knew_ she had lived through the Battle of Selene Point – scrapped, bruised, with three ribs cracked, a sprained ankle, and a broken arm, but otherwise unscathed.

The day after being discharged from the infirmary, she received a visit from Queen Serenity herself. Minako fought to bring the woman's image to clarity, then stopped and kicked herself. Of course, there was no need to. All she had to do was slap on Usagi's face and _odango_hairstyle. Had it really been that long since she last saw the Queen? Time, as always, never stopped for anything.

This memory Minako could recall like the lines on the palms of her hands. She had been surveying the ruins outside the All-Defense Barrier, leaning partly on the red crutch she had been given and partly against a column with grooves digging into her cast. Her mind had been drifting off, glazed over with the veil of philosophic contemplation, when the Queen's voice startled her to wakefulness.

_("Good evening," she greeted with a dip of her chin. Her voice was smooth as glass and rich like liquid gold. "You are…Mina Aphrodi? The stars are lovely tonight, aren't they?"_

_(If Mina hadn't been in rough shape, she would have collapsed to her knee and wait until the woman had bid her stand. She tried to but almost stumbled in a heap, so instead she lifted her free arm and saluted. "Y-Yes, Your Highness!" she bumbled excitedly. "Ah, I mean, yes this is her, Third Class Hunter Mina Aphrodi of the Venusian Royal Forces 19th Cohort a-and Princess of Venus." Her throat clicked as she swallowed back nervous laughter. "I-I agree, Milady, the stars are quite the sight to behold. Well, at least inside the barrier, if you'll beg pardon, but still lovely nonetheless!"_

_(Queen Serenity smiled. "At ease, soldier. I am not as strict as the rumors make me out to be, but with this war escalating to fever pitch I have no choice but to harden my heart and lead my people deeper into the eye of the storm. It is not an easy task, ordering my people to march and die for their planet."_

_("I understand the feeling," Mina said, and she glanced at the sky. "I lead my Cohort in many battles back home. They listened when I spoke and they charged headlong when I commanded them." She sniffled and stamped the urge to cry. "I lost a few good friends in those days, one of them being my combat pet. It's one of those disadvantages you have to take in stride, no matter how much you hate it or how much you beat yourself up over it. You just have to take a deep breath and keep moving forward, because that's what everyone in the Solar System wants. Fighting may be in our blood, but it's peace we desire the most. A peace they can endure until they pass away and move on to the next world.__ She looked at her feet, cheeks flush with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I tend to ramble…but, you know, it's part of the job. Rousing speeches are good for stirring up the morale, least that's what my mentor tells me."_

_(The Queen nodded. "I've heard about him, Artemis Damascus Shepard. I can see he has taught you well. He reminds me of my advisor, Luna Hawke. She was overseeing the injured troops during the reaver's assault."_

_("Luna," Mina echoed. The name caused a ripple in the dark screen of her mind. "She's that tall woman with the cat ears. I think…I think she hauled me to the tents when that machine fell." She trailed off, uncertain if that was indeed the right person. "I don't remember."_

_("Luna is an exceptional healer, one of the best on the Moon. You were one among many in critical condition she started treating. Artemis was worried you wouldn't make it through the night."_

_(Mina gave a single bark of laughter. "But as you can see, Your Highness, I am still standing! Kunzite couldn't take me down and neither did that fel reaver. A soldier doesn't fully rest until the head of the cow is chopped off and the white flag is raised!"_

_("I believe you meant 'head of the snake', Princess Aphrodi."_

_("Beg pardon?"_

_("If you wish to dispose of a leading figure and throw his followers into disarray, you cut off the head of a snake. A snake is often represented as a symbol of evil."_

_("…Oh," Mina said dumbly, eyes shifting left and right. "So…all this time it was a snake and not a cow. Like in that one story about the group of people that built and worshiped a gold calf…but I guess the animals mixed up." She rubbed her neck and gave the Queen a sheepish smile. "Well, I learned something new today."_

_(Serenity laughed, and to Mina it was like a ringing of church bells signaling dawn's first light. "You're something else, Princess Aphrodi. I don't believe I have had a genuine laugh in…quite some time, actually. The war tends to lead me astray from more important matters, not as a sovereign but a mother." Her face darkened, and the air grew somber._

_("How has she been?" asked the hunter. "Your daughter?"_

_("Serena is faring well," Serenity answered, "and for that I admire her strength. She's just like her father, always calm in times of crisis." It was her turn to sniffle. "Sometimes I think it's unhealthy of her to remain so impassive…but my foremothers have been reputed to have been strong, unflappable creatures in their time of reign." A rueful smile touched her lips. "I suppose the gods have decided to pass on this suffering widow…."_

_("That's not true!" Mina exclaimed. "It's not your fault things have turned out this way! The sack of the Bay of Rainbows, the King's assassination, the Cosmic Pantheon's razing, those were beyond our control. But we're still here! Selene Point and Millennium Hold are still standing. If we can just push back a little harder, I'm sure we can take back what was lost and rebuild them!"_

_("But therein lays the problem: Metalia has the ability to conjure droves of maleficent beings with only a mere thought. We as humanity are limited in number."_

_("What about finding the entrance to the Negaverse? If we can open a big enough portal, we can send our forces to the other side and put a stop to Metalia once and for all."_

_("My councilors and I have thought the same thing, but you must remember it takes a lot of warlocks – and even more mana – to conjure a gateway to the Negaverse. As for Metalia, she is a creature comprised of pure dark matter. She is, in a way, _the _source of fel magicks in the galaxy."_

_("Have you ever actually confronted Metalia?"_

_("No, but we as a global force are aware she cannot be physically damaged. I don't believe even the strongest magic can harm her."_

_("Then how do we go about this?" Mina posed. Defeat surely sounded like the proper option, but heavens and hell below knew Mina was not the kind of person to surrender so easily. No, she would not give up. There had to be a way. Every enemy had a weakness, even tough ones like Kunzite; Artemis had hammered that into her brain so many times it made her want to pull her hair out. If Metalia couldn't be hurt neither by solid weapons nor fazed by arcane spells, what could?_

_(An idea illuminated the corridors of her mind. "What about Beryl? She's a warlock, a very powerful one at that. What if we capture her? Does the Lunar army have its own T&I unit? If we take her prisoner, we can force her to create a door to the Negaverse. We can learn the secrets on how to best deal with Metalia!" Minako's chest swelled with pride. It was on the spur of the moment, but it was a brilliant plan. It was sure to work!_

_(Except the Queen shook her head and the featherless weight the hunter carried in her was instantly crushed by strength-enchanted steel. "It is a sound plan, but I'm afraid it cannot be done. Beryl is corrupted by Metalia and has become an extension of her." She pressed her lips to a thin, firm line. "I have seen it myself. I have felt it…and it is nightmarish. It is far beyond anything the Solar System has ever witnessed. And with the way things are—" she paused, inhaled a lungful, sighed—"if the war continues like this, then the galaxy will be lost, and so too will our freedom."_

_(Mina clenched her fists, heard the leather of her gloves creak and crackle. "There has to be something we can do."_

_("No," said the Queen in a too calm voice. "There is nothing we can do. We are too few and stretched too far to return the favor in our hand."_

_(She ground her teeth. A muscle in her cheek twitched like an irregular heartbeat. "Then what do you suggest we do?"_

_("There is nothing _you can_ do," Serenity reiterated. "But I can."_

_("You?" Mina sputtered, then more composedly, "How can you end the war? You're just one person…and Metalia…!"_

_("I understand. My power alone cannot compare to the might of an abomination. I am, of course, merely human." A beatific smile suddenly spread the lady's mouth. "There is only one thing that can and it lies at the center of the moon, sleeping eternally until a time requires it to awaken and casts its light into the deepest darkness."_

_("And what's that?"_

_("The Holy Silver Imperium Crystal: the crown jewel of the Goddess Selene…and the royal family heirloom."_

_("The Silver Imperium Crystal?" Mina exclaimed. She took a step back, toppled back, and caught herself on the pillar. In a lower voice she added, "You mean it's real? It actually exists?"_

_(Serenity nodded. "It does. It has been under the satellite for over a thousand years, well before my ancestors established its place in war-torn Luna. The Silver Crystal was a gift presented to my forefather the first King from Selene Herself, that Her Light would always banish evil to the shadows of the universe should we ever be unable to overcome insurmountable odds." She turned and gazed out at the stricken land. "This is one of those times, Princess Aphrodi. Selene must be called once more." The Queen whirled around and pinned Mina with the bluest pair of irises the latter ever held. "I will journey tomorrow and retrieve the crystal. With it in hand, I shall confront and destroy Metalia and Beryl permanently."_

_("You can't do that!" Mina cried. "You can't," she whimpered. "If…If the stories are true, then by using the crystal you'll—"_

_("All is fair in love and war," said the Queen, unfazed by the outburst. "I shall throw away the vessel of my life, and in my place the world shall know peace. The skies will no longer rain blood and fear."_

_("What about your daughter? Who's going to be there when she ascends the throne? Who's going to be there when she weds in holy matrimony and her only flesh and blood isn't present to congratulate her?" She clenched her fists, and with a frustrated growl threw her arms out before her, indicating the Sea of Serenity and the mainland. __"Your royal guard is _nothing_ compared to Beryl and Metalia. Who's going to protect her?"_

_("Why, you are, Princess Aphrodi."_

_(A thunderclap of shock reflected on her face like an open book. "…What? But…why me? Can't you assign a few soldiers from E-Sect? They're the best of the best and I'm…I'm just a hunter! I don't know how to use magic!"_

_("Power and magic alone are not what makes a soldier," said the Queen sagely. "Rather, it is the courage that shapes the person for who she is. Determination, honesty, loyalty, kindness, and trust; these attributes as a whole create potential, and with that potential comes great promise. That is what I see in you, Mina Aphrodi. In you, there is a desire to protect those you love and those who are weaker than you. In you, you yearn to not destroy but to recreate."_

_(And before Mina could react the Queen Serenity stepped forward and took the hunter's hands in her own. "You're not the only one. I have spoken to three other young women throughout the Solar System, and they have agreed to join together in a single, united force called the Sailor Soldiers. These women I have collected are the strongest and most resourceful among their kin, and as Sailor Soldiers they would represent their respective planet as both warrior and morale standard. However, they do not have the years of experience that you possess. They need someone to guide them, to teach them. A great leader makes for an even greater force." She squeezed those hands, and said, "Will you lead the Sailor Soldiers, Mina Aphrodi, through times of peace and times of war?"_

_(Shyly, Mina lowered her gaze. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I don't think I have what it takes to carry that kind of responsibility. If I lead those girls and I make a mistake, it could cost us more than just our lives; one false move would mean the death of you, your daughter, and the fall of the Kingdom. I…wouldn't want that on my conscience."_

_("It's not easy being a leader," said Serenity, "least of all governing an entire satellite. A leader has to listen and solve peoples' problems, attend meetings with various planetary figureheads, and fill out tons and _tons_ of paperwork." She giggled. "Sometimes it's so boring I find myself wishing I had been born to a normal lifestyle. Still, being a leader has its benefits. She can choose to ride into battle or direct the course of war from her throne. She can change the way a team works with just a few words, so long as she discusses it with her consorts beforehand. She can strengthen the bond between sisters off the field. Most of all, and most importantly, a leader must know when it is time to die, for each battle she fights is a like traversing a tightrope over a yawning gorge. Your choices could either mean everyone's survival…or their deaths._

_("Were it under different circumstances I would allow you privacy to contemplate, but time is not on our side. A decision must be made, Princess Aphrodi, so what say you? Will you or will you not lead the Sailor Soldiers?"_

_(Mina sighed; time really wasn't with them, was it? Thoughts and possibilities raced through her brain like an antivirus scan, epileptic flashes dissipating and resurfacing between blinks. Then, she arrived at an impasse, and asked, "How far is it from here to where the Silver Imperium Crystal is?"_

_("It depends on the mode of transportation," answered the Queen. "By ark it would take several hours; however, I do not trust the skies to treat us kindly, for Metalia's aspects may lay in wait. I will go by steed and bring with me a retinue from E-Sect so that they may hide our presence from unkindly sights. The journey will cost two days on the road, and while I am gone I shall have you, Luna, and Artemis oversee the council and war efforts. I should like to hope it will only be two days, because that is how long it usually takes, but that is if we are not intercepted. It could be a week before we reach the Moon's center."_

_("Forgive me if I'm being rude, but this whole plan seems to have been cobbled together rather suddenly. Wouldn't it have been better if you had brought this to my attention sooner?"_

_("I admit the plan was made in haste and without prior judgment, but…whether or not I had told you at an earlier time, the outcome would still be the same: you would not have understood then, and you will not understand now."_

_("Of course I'd understand! We're allies! Our views are different and some people may not agree, but I'm a pretty open-minded person, see, so surely your right can't be _that_ bad. All's fair in love and war, you said so yourself. It's all for the sake of the Kingdom and our freedom."_

_(Queen Serenity shook her head. "You are a kind girl, Mina Aphrodi, but I can't tell you. Not yet. Somewhere, someday, it will all make sense. You'll understand, I promise you so." She turned her gaze heavenwards and settled upon the blue-green jewel that was Terra._

_(Mina frowned. She hadn't expected any of this to be happening. She didn't think the war would come so close to the Kingdom, but that was how war worked, didn't it? It rears up like some looming, herculean wave, and when its shadow is thrown across every pane and flower and shrouds day in twilight it descends like a blazing meteorite and devours every beast and person and object beneath a tide of crushing suffocation. War had always been that way, and it would never change save the art of war._

_(Mina didn't want that. This was not the life she wanted for anyone to lead, now and in the future. She didn't want anyone to suffer, regardless of the hypocrisy that particular thought presented. Thus she decided. "I'll do it, Your Highness. I will lead the Sailor Soldiers to the best of my ability. You have my word as a Princess of Venus and fellow compatriot of the Solar System Alliance."_

_(And so was Mina Aphrodi's fate sealed.)_

Not long after she had made that announcement, Queen Serenity led her to a chamber beneath Millennium Hold. There the three other girls waited – paladin Raye Gradivus of Mars; priestess Amy Enodios of Mercury; and warrior Lita Fulgens from Jupiter. They were gathered around a pedestal that held a beautiful red gem, and this gem, Serenity explained, was called the Roseate Imperium Crystal. It was presented as a gift from the first King of Terra to the first King of Luna in ages past, when they signed a treaty that would open all airspaces to travel between planet and satellite. The Roseate Crystal, the legend goes, was said to be created by the Old Gods, which contained a fragment of the entity's power as they took turns forging it from the most ancient, raw materials in the universe. This jewel, with a simple yet lengthy incantation, could transcend the mortal spirit and imbibe them with strength unlike anything they had ever seen or known.

And by the Gods, did it _ever_. It felt as though every pore in her body had opened and screamed bloody murder, such was the agony that swallowed her whole like a behemoth waterfall. Sliding bamboo splinters under fingernails was like pinching the skin on the underside of a person's arm. Minako thought she saw herself writhing on the floor, legs kicking and thrashing, hands pulling at hair to reveal the grey matter causing her so much pain so she could throw it and hear the slick, juicy impact as it splattered all over the wall.

Then the pain subsided, and gradually she awoke to the glow of a warm light. She felt weak, exhausted, but at the same time more alive than she had ever been in her short life. It was though her blood had been drained and replaced with sweet, liquid fire, her nerves sparking with electric nirvana. Her body weighed no lighter than a wisp of cloud.

It was the most amazing feeling in the world. And it was all hers, no one else's save their own.

That was the day they became the Sailor Soldiers. No longer were they Mina, Raye, Amy, and Lita, but Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter. They were the Inner Court Senshi, and they guarded Princess Serenity – Serena – with their lives.

Then a month passed, and Metalia appeared above Millennium Hold. It was not an invasion, but a cataclysm.

It would have been worse, much worse. The damage would have spanned entire galaxies had it not been for the Queen's intervention.

"A thousand years sure doesn't feel like a long time," Minako said aloud. She raised an arm and stretched her hand out toward the sun. "What do you think happened to us before we reincarnated? Were we in heaven? Hell? Or were we in limbo, sleeping until the day we returned to the physical plane of existence?"

"I couldn't tell you, Mina," sighed Artemis. "Nobody knows the answers to those questions. It's one of those things people tend to avoid for good reason." A heavy, awkward pause hung in the air. "Why do you ask?"

"I wonder where Usagi is right now," Minako replied. "What sort of dreams she's having while the heart monitor is operating at her bedside. Must be nice, being inside your own head while the world around you passes by."

"Mina…!"

"Hey, I never said I condoned her being attacked. What happened to Usagi was horrible, and because of that we're minus a damn good leader. Had it taken place in the Silver Millennium during wartime, Queen Serenity would have drilled the unlucky fella under a spotlight until he wet himself with terror. But me, I don't play that way. You attack the Princess you attack all the Sailor Soldiers, and when you attack us you attack _me_. Gods help the poor bastard who did this; when I find him,"—Minako closed her fist on the sun—"I will make him rue the day he was conceived!"

Artemis's ears dropped even lower, as low as they could possibly go. "But…Mina…the Sailor Senshi aren't totally helpless. You're a leader, too. The original leader, when you look back on its founding."

Minako scoffed. "How can I be? A leader's supposed to be brave and fearless, keeping her calm in even the most hopeless situations." She looked away and let her arm drop to her side. "All I've been doing is making circles in the floor wherever I go. A leader shouldn't have to worry so much."

"You worry because you're human," said Artemis. "It's only natural for anyone to feel that way when something bad happens to them. That's nothing to be ashamed about."

"And I know I shouldn't…but….it shouldn't be this way. Not now. Not ever." She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Usagi didn't ask for this. Usagi just wants to live her life the way she wanted, you know? Because sooner or later time's going to go by and Crystal Tokyo will be here before you know it. When that time comes, Usagi will have to stop being a Sailor Soldier and become a woman, a Queen among people." She stared into Artemis's blue eyes. "It's a long time coming, but Usagi needs to be loved and protected by her retinue until then. If we don't, what will become of Earth? What will become of Chibi-Usa if Usagi is lost? I can't let that happen. I can't let any of that happen. To allow those events to pass will be not only my biggest failure but Queen Serenity's as well, and that's not something I want to live with for the rest of my life. I won't allow the other Senshi to carry that burden."

"Oh, Minako!" Artemis cried. He walked up and brushed the top of his head against her leg. "I have faith in you. I always have and I always will! I'm your friend, remember? You can always talk to me if you're ever feeling blue; that's why I'm a cat and I have big ears!"

That line had broken down the barriers. It made Minako break out laughing with in a gorgeous, sunny smile as she scooped the cat into her arms and hugged him. "Artemis Damascus Shepard, I don't know what I'd do without you…!"

_KA-BOOMF!_

"Aaah!"

"Ami, your hair's on fire! Stop, drop, and roll! _STOP, DROP, AND ROLL!_"

"Dropping and rolling!"

What the hell? Minako looked over her shoulder and did a double take. Makoto and Ami were ten feet away, and, sure enough, Ami was on the ground, rolling back and forth and back and forth like a pig in mud. And her hair was indeed on fire – not ablaze, but as though she was wearing an orange, dancing, burning sort of crown.

It was the strangest sight, seeing Ami move like that.

"Huh," said Minako. "So _that's _where I put the Explosive Trap at."

"You set a trap?" Artemis exclaimed.

"I didn't want to be bothered! Besides, I was in the mood for something fiery!"

"Is it out yet?" Ami asked when she got to her feet. She ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head of ashes.

Makoto licked her thumb and forefinger, reached out, and pinched a sizzling blue strand to smoke. "You are now."

"What are you two doing?" Minako asked. "Better yet, how long have you been standing there, listening to me ramble on and on?"

Makoto's eyes widened. "You noticed?"

"I'm a Sailor Soldier. We have the same talents, you know. Well, almost the same talents." Her gaze dropped to Makoto's bosom. The latter squeaked and folded her arms over them, her face cherry red.

Ami sighed. "It's true, Minako, we've been here for a good while. We heard everything you said while I was, erm, trying to deactivate the trap. About the Silver Millennium, the creation of the Sailor Senshi, you being made leader by Queen Serenity…."

"I didn't say anything. I was thinking to myself."

"Quite the contrary, actually," said Makoto. "We just want to let you know that if there's anything troubling you, you can always talk it over with us."

"Eh?"

"We're all under a lot of strain right now," said Ami, "but we'll get through this, Minako. We're Sailor Soldiers and as a team we have to support each other every step of the way."

"Yeah, you don't need to worry! That's why we're here, so we can lift the weight off your shoulders and make your job as leader a little easier!" Makoto clapped a strong hand on Minako's shoulder.

Minako pouted. "You really shouldn't. As a matter of fact, nobody offered to help Heracles when he had to bear the weight of the world beneath him and he's done a pretty good job keeping global destruction from happening!"

"That would be _Atlas_, Mina," Ami corrected her. "Heracles was a hero in Greek mythology that searched for atonement by committing himself to the Twelve Labors."

"Oh, what difference does it make? They're both men and very strong!"

"We're going to help you either way," Makoto chided the girl gently. "You'll do more than hurt yourself if you stress too much, and we can't have that if you go down for the count. What would Usagi say?"

Minako averted her gaze and stared at her hands. She thought for a moment, sighed. "I guess I can ease off my high horse a _tiny bit_," she mumbled reluctantly. "'S not like we're gonna be fighting for a while, anyway."

"That's the spirit!" Makoto gushed. Minako rolled her eyes.

"But we can't be too lax," Ami added. "There's still the matter of who – or what – attacked Usagi."

"Ami is right," said Artemis. "We have to vigilant at all times for the enemy may still be in Azabu-Juuban. He may be watching us right now, reading into our words and actions."

"Could we be facing a rogue, then?" Minako asked curiously.

"It's very possible; that or we could be dealing with one who is light of foot and clever of mind. Enemies don't have to be supernatural to be considered a threat."

"So we could be overanalyzing this. It could have been some punk off the street for all we know."

Artemis nodded. "That is also likely…but I wouldn't hold my breath. Stranger things than this have occurred before."

"Then let's assume your previous theory is correct." Minako scanned the street, left to right, right to left. "We'll have to come up with a schedule that won't interfere with our civilian activities."

"That's going to be pretty difficult to manage," said Ami.

"That hasn't stopped us before," countered Makoto. "All that time spent eliminating youma and otherworldly, and we _still_ have time to study for exams."

"We'll find a way around that problem," said Minako. "I'll text Rei and let her know. You two should do the same for—hey, is that Mami over there?" She strained her neck forward and caught a glimpse of a blonde head tilted back studying the clouds.

"Mami?" Makoto parroted confusedly.

"Tomoe Mami," said Ami. "Rei introduced us to her at Crown Arcade the other day, remember?"

Makoto's eyes alighted in recognition. "Oh! You mean the girl with her hair done up in drills." She laughed. "I was wondering why I kept thinking about _Gurren-Lagann_ after we left."

"Yeah, that is Mami!" Minako gushed, ignoring the exchange between the two Inner Senshi. "She looks like she needs somebody to talk to. I'm gonna go see what's up!" She dropped a startled Artemis to the ground, hopped to her feet, and flew across the trampled lawn. "MAMI! HEY, MAMI!"


	11. You Are A Special Person

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

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**11.  
You Are A Special Person **

The wind is bitingly cold, a cruel mistress whose full red lips trace across every inch of your body. She marks the skin with her pointed teeth and traces nonsense patterns along the ridges of butterfly-wing shoulder blades with her sinuous tongue, but she is one who never gives what the other truly desires, the burning, wanting _need_. It is man's shame to yearn for such a thing, and yet…it is also man's most secret hope. A person's choice to be free and to set free.

Pain is weakness. Weakness is punishment. Punishment is the art of asking why and how and what did I do to deserve this. It is a tortured, bone-crushing cycle of life.

She drops the jacket to the ground. The hairs on her arms stand to attention, the pores puckering like a slug doused in salt. She doesn't recoil; the air feels…comforting, welcoming, a lover's embrace to a soldier who returns after a long tour overseas.

She wonders if she will experience this same feeling when she falls into the water, wonders if her reflection will guide her to which all mankind must return to someday.

She's been thinking too much, far too much.

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to exist on a path that may or may not already be pre-determined? What lies beyond death? Is there such a thing as heaven and is there such a thing as hell? What of limbo, purgatory? Why is there a consequence for every action performed? How come there is so much negativity in the world? Why do people act the way they are? Why do the people we love, the people we love to hate, have to die? Do we get second chances or do we mistake those second chances for draws of luck, coincidences? Who or what created us and what is the purpose for being here? Are we people in the image of higher powers or are we tools to be manipulated by those higher powers for their own amusement?

Too many questions, so little time. She thought she had all the time in the world to find those answers, but all she learned was people – humanity – could care less. Who needs gods when you have money? Who needs love when you could lead astray and pull the unfortunate soul with the chain leash?

Who needed masks to hide your true feelings when you can breathe that huge sigh of relief and finally stop pretending? With them gone, that's two less competitors to worry about in this struggling economy.

Mother.

Father.

Tangled in a net of twisted plastic and broken cartilage.

Blood, fire, and gasoline, a sweet, repugnant invader in the nose and the back of the throat. Black smoke unspooling in serpentine threads, sunshine bleeding and lunatic.

They were gone in an instant.

And here she stands, young and forever alone.

_YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY._

_ISN'T THIS WHAT YOU WISHED FOR?_

_THEY WON'T BOTHER YOU ANYMORE._

_YOU'RE FREE._

_YOU'RE FINALLY—__**fInALLy**_**—**_free…._

**(FREE AT LAST FREE AT LAST FREE AT LAST—)**

She stares into the water and the water stares back, a yawning black-blue abyss of beer bottles, algae, and hungry fish.

_Go on. Do it. No one will notice._

**NO ONE WILL CARE.**

_Do yourself a favor and take the plunge. Search for that ideal world you've always dreamed of._

**NO ONE WILL CRY.**

_Hell is what you make of it; and hell…_

**HELL IS A FLOWER WITH THORNS.**

_Jump right in. The water's fine._

She swallows back the moan rising to escape, bites her cheek until she bleeds and the pressure behind her eyes loosens and calms. Her features settle, betraying no emotion.

_Come on now, don't be shy!_

She takes a step, another, and a third, then stops. She peers down; the tips of her shoes hover an inch off the edge of the pier.

_IT WILL CLEAN YOUR SOUL._

The wind combs through her hair, a soft, uncaring sigh.

_They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go, I was singin' this song~_

No. No, dammit, _no_. Anything but that…that…_just no_. It's not fitting. It's not—

_We'll meet again some sunny day~_

She takes one final breath, lets it go, and throws her arms back. She wills the muscles in her legs to move and slowly, shakily, her foot leaves the wooden planks. She relaxes and begins to tilt forward….

Then a voice penetrates the darkness within, blazing like the meteoric rise of the sun, resonating as the clear crystal toll of church bells across open land. It is soft as silk, cool as the breeze caressing her sweat-slick face, and warm, so pleasantly warm. It sounds close and quiet, fluctuating from a high pitch to a low timbre.

_"Nichiyou hiru sagari arifureta kaze to, Kimi no naku arukuma chikato kimi o mitsuketa…."_

That voice…she's heard it from somewhere before. She can match it to the visage of the person who sits at the front of class every day—always attentive, always humble, always there to lend a hand when someone needed help or had to go see nurse for medications and rest.

Her name is Kaname Madoka, and, as Tomoe Mami turns toward the girl with the rose-colored hair, she has the most beautiful voice Mami's ever heard.

She turns away from the water and sees the younger girl sitting at the edge of the pier, lying back with hands splayed behind her. Gazing out at the lake, she proceeds into the next set of stanzas: _"Kizukana ifurishite zure chigatta mitta, Kimi wa tada toku mitsumete tatazun deita…."_

She looks…so at peace. With nature. With the world.

…With herself.

Why? Why is that?

How?

How does she…?

Her voice cracks at a particularly high note and she stops. She grimaces, clears her throat. Mami takes advantage of this opportunity. "…Madoka?" she says dumbly. That's not how she wanted to kick things off; she had more to say, much more, but the words are stuck, trapped.

"Ah, senpai!" The girl jumps, startled from her reverie. "How…how long have you been standing there? I-I didn't even see you!"

"I haven't been here long," says Mami; and she thinks, _Liar, you keep coming back to this place day after day, hour after hour, hoping the abyss will leap out and swallow you whole._ "What are you doing?"

"Oh, you heard _that_," Madoka says softly. She lowers her gaze, a shy smile working its way onto her lips. "I heard it on the radio last week. It's a pretty old song – it's from way back in the early nineties – but, well, I liked it. I sing it now and then and work on my vocals." She giggles. "I'm still practicing, but I know the lyrics by heart so that should make things a bit easier."

"You don't need practice. You sounded good—no," a vehement shake of the head, "better than good, you were perfect. So you hit a rough spot, it won't change my opinion. You are fine just the way you are."

A gasp, and Madoka lifts her head so quickly and so sharply Mami almost recoils. "Do you really think so? I…I don't think I do. I know I'm good, but not _that_ good. Compared to all the other artists and would-be aspirants I'm…just _plain_, nothing special."

"But you are. Even if everyone else were to say otherwise, there's at least one person who'll still believe in you." She stares at the water, its surface calm and unperturbed…waiting, beckoning like a sultry siren from foreign shores. "To me, that person's views – and that of your own – will only matter, because the rest of the world won't know what they're missing."

Madoka's cheeks glow the shade of fire-bird red. "Th-thank you, senpai. I'll admit you're not the first to tell me the same thing, but hearing it from you…it makes me happy. Senpai is…usually very quiet. She's also…quite lonely, even though her actions don't portray her as so."

"You don't know anything about me," the elder bites, and suddenly the wounds reopen, pain and sorrow and bitterness stirring a storm that refuses to rest. It fights and bleeds and screams "I" at the top of the world; and it aches—_oh how it aches!_ and _why won't it go away?_ "If you truly believe in the _garbage_ people pass along to one another, then you have no right to associate with me. A person like that doesn't deserve to be my _friend_." Her mouth spits the empathized word as if it carried a foul taste.

"It's not because of that."

"Then what is? You had to have heard of me from somebody." She scoffs, "_Everyone_ knows who I am."

"But they don't know you as well as I do."

"What!" Mami exclaims, and for that second time she's at a loss for words—not out of child-like awe but bemusement. "That's ridiculous! This is the most we've spoken to each other! How can you say you know me? I hardly even know _you!_"

"It does sound strange," says Madoka, "but...how do I put this? I know you not because of gossip, but because I've watched you. No no, I never stalked you! Honest to Gods I haven't! I'd never!" She flinches at the predatory glare bearing down on her. "I just…noticed. The day the term started and our seats were assigned, I could tell." She blinks, long lashes like curtains hiding the hurt within. "No one should have to feel that way. No matter who you are, everyone wants somebody to make them happy."

"That's selfish." There is a shift in reality, and in the space of microseconds Mami sees her father and mother sitting in the living room listening to the latest on the stock market; and there she is, young and innocent and small for her age, tugging insistently at her mom's sleeve. She asks to play with her, with her father, anyone, she wanted them to be away from the television, from work. Her mother answers with a finger tap to the forehead and a tender smile, and her response would always be the same: _"I'm sorry, Mami, perhaps another time."_

"Maybe it is, but it's in our blood. It's part of what makes us…well, _us_. If we find the people that make us happy, then we would feel more alive than we are when we're lonely." The blush on her face darkens. "At least…that's how my parents put it. I'm…not what you call 'poetic material'."

The wind picks up, plucks at the fabric of their clothes. The water is still there, but now it grows tired of this game. It captures her wrist with fingers dripping of muck and algae, and whispers in her ear, _Come with us. Stay with us. Why do you idle when you can dream forever?_ It pulls pulls _pulls_, just like how she pulled at her family's arms, begging with eyes brimming with muddied tears, teeth bared in a smile made of rotting fish bones.

Mami stamps down the repulsive shudder. She says, "You sound pretty confident, but it still doesn't convince me. Again I'll ask: How can you know me if this is truly our first meeting? What proof do you have?"

"I don't have any proof to show you," says Madoka, "but somehow…deep down…we know each other. I'm not sure how, or why, but that's the feeling I get whenever I look at you. Seeing you up close strengthens it."

Mami regards her with a long, strange look. "I'm sure we never met before the term. You could be mistaking me for someone else."

"I'm not!" Kaname Madoka declares almost pleadingly. "I know it's weird, but I'm telling you the truth. Maybe it's déjà vu. Maybe it's karma. All I know is that I can't stand seeing you this way, all alone and with nobody to turn for help when you need it the most!" Her voice raises several octaves at the end, and this outburst happens to stop a few passing folk and draw a number of eyes in their direction.

Mami, for her part, can only stare, lost and in awe.

_Come! Come!_ The wind and the water whine, _Come on!_

Madoka doesn't notice the unwanted attention she's attracted. She doesn't seem to know there are even people other than them. Her gaze is riveted on Mami and Mami alone, bright and intense like a pair of alien suns, and Mami can't look away. They're so big, so wide, so…so _open_, as though she is gazing not into oblivion but infinity—weightless, boundless eternity.

Those eyes didn't belong on a human being. Those eyes belonged to a _god_. They made her look so…well, not so much as _old_; rather, they appeared to make her _ageless_, neither young or old but in between both sides of the physiological spectrum. Like an object floating in zero gravity on a space shuttle always and forever, and the emotion that stings like a poison dart in Mami's heart and soul…while unnerving, it's not uncomfortable.

The hardness in Madoka's face softens and falls, and right then and there she is a lot older than she should probably feel. Mami couldn't be sure. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you, senpai."

"It's okay," Mami says softly. "Get if off your chest if it helps."

"That's not it." She shakes her head again. "I want to help you in any way I can. Whatever troubles you have, I'm more than willing to listen."

"You…wouldn't mind?"

"Of course not. That's what friends are for, senpai."

"Friends?" Her breath catches in her throat and pressure builds at the corners of her eyes. She closes them and swallows back the lump forming there. "I would like that…Madoka," she adds evenly. "Please take good care of me."

"I will, senpai."

"Just Mami will do."

"Mami it is, then." She smiles, and in that moment—slowly, gradually—the darkened veil lifts from Mami's world.

The wind moans and the water screams after her, but she doesn't hear it. The light feels good, the light is warm. Such is the smile of Kaname Madoka.

* * *

_Those were the days, weren't they?_

_Yes. Yes, they were._

_Those days are gone._

_Yes. Yes, they are._


	12. closerDISTANCE

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**12.  
****closer/DISTANCE**

A voice rang throughout the air like vibrations from a tuning fork. "MAMI! HEY, MAMI!"

Golden irises snapped open in shock. _Madoka?_

"Mami!"

_(School is about to start. Students and teachers are walking up the steps to the building, prepared for the day. Suitcases and backpacks stuffed with textbooks, notebooks, writing utensils. Uniforms clean, uniforms bearing the stench of sweat and cologne and perfume._

_(Autumn's coming. She tastes it in the breeze—crisp, smoky, underlying frost. The tree bark rough and uncomfortable against the small of her back. Birdsong lost in an incoherent jumble of conversation, sounds. Palms slick on the suitcase's steel handle._

_(School is about to start, and Madoka is running late._

_(Where could she be? What could be keeping her? Maybe she overslept. Perhaps she's unwell and recuperating in bed. Personal matters, then? Very unlikely, but possible._

_(And then, a cry, sweet and saccharine like honey: _"Mami!"

_(She looks from her watch, and there is Madoka standing in a crowd that weaves past her like ants maneuvering around an obstacle in their path. Madoka, who is small in stature and unassuming, but in her eyes the latter is a bright splotch of paint, a color that can't be put into words or artistic value, a color that outshines all as the sun that blinds any who dare gaze upon it._

_(Madoka, her first real friend as far back as she can remember._

_(Madoka, a younger girl whose eyes are aglow with awe and affection when their gazes meet._

_(Madoka, a person she can call...sister._

_(Her heart skips a beat, skin beneath her cheeks reddening. She hopes the feeling's mutual…._

_(Madoka slows to a stop and bows, low and deep. "Good morning, Mami!"_

_(She smiles. The world around her loses focus, fades into nonexistence, until it's just the two of them. Senpai and kouhai. "Good morning, Madoka."_

_(…She hopes it will last forever.)_

"Mami~" the voice sang. The sound of snapping fingers resonated like a crack from a whip. "Wake up, Mami! Earth to Mami! Do you copy?"

"Madoka?" She tore her view from the sky and onto the person before her. It was a girl, but it was not Madoka. This one was taller, older, with long flaxen hair and azure irises.

The girl blinked. "Madoka?" she repeated curiously. "My name's Minako. Aino Minako, the one and only! You remember me, don't you, Mami?" She beamed a wide, toothy grin. "We met at the Crown Arcade. I was trying out that new game there, _Puella…_something…_Zero's Return_ or whatever. I think it had to do with _Rockman_."

"…Oh," was all Mami could say. Her shoulders slumped visibly, lips pursed together in a tight lock. "Yes, I remember you, Minako. You caused a scene with your swearing at the cabinet."

Minako laughed and sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "Oh, that? It was a spur of the moment, a slip of the tongue! I'm not usually like that. I am, in fact, quite a cordial specimen, hahaha!" She put on the air of a haughty noble and laughed even more, one hand poised daintily under her chin.

Mami didn't join in, nor did the bland expression on her face change.

Minako stopped and dropped the act, humbled and more than a little embarrassed. Then her face brightened, as if a light switch had gone off in her head. "Hey, at least you know who I am! I'd be pretty upset if you didn't! Haha, I'm joking, I'm joking; I wouldn't be if you hadn't!" She chortled as Mami's features broke and settled on bewilderment. "Gosh, you're so cute. You make me wanna pinch your cheeks!" Her hands reached out and Mami took a step back.

"Go easy on the poor girl, Mina!" A second voice hailed; Mami glanced over Minako's shoulder and saw two more girls—a brunette and a blue-hair—approaching them. "You're giving her mixed signals!"

Minako stuck her tongue out the brunette. "All the girls fight to be my best friend, Makoto! You I understand—" Because of the war the Senshi had waged on Queen Beryl and the Negaverse, but Mami didn't need to know that. "—but with Mami I want things to flow their natural way. We girls have to bond, you know? Shopping, ass-kicking, bickering, friendship is magic!"

Mami grimaced. "I'm afraid I must disagree with you, Minako. Friendship is not as…'magical'…as you believe it to be."

"What!" Mina exclaimed. "You can't be serious! Friendship is magical! It's the best thing a person can ever have!"

"It's nothing personal against any of you. It's just that…I've had a few…unpleasant experiences with peers my age."

"We know the feeling," said the blue-haired girl, offering Mami a commiserating look. "We've been bullied at one point during our school years because of who we are, but it didn't bother us for long. We ignored what people said about us because we knew their words were unfounded."

"Ami's right," said Makoto, who nodded appraisingly at her companion. "No matter what happens to you, you should always be yourself, Mami. Those kids will never who you really are unless they get to know you."

That made Mami smile. "Thank you for your kind words…but I dropped out of high school."

All three girls gasped.

"WHAT!" Minako cried.

"When did you drop out?" asked Makoto.

"Two years ago," answered Mami. "It was near of the end of the term."

"WHY?" Minako took Mami by the shoulders. "Did those ingrates force you? They did, didn't they? The spoiled, rotten bast—oww!"

"Relax, Mina," said Ami, who had her fingers twisted around the girl's ear. "Let Mami speak."

"It wasn't because of peer pressure or that I was bullied," said Mami, the smile still on her lips. "No, it was something else. I had…personal matters to attend to, some of which were urgent and of the utmost import. Those matters could not be avoided nor delayed."

"Wow," said Minako. "That must have been pretty bad."

"It's not our place to ask, Mina," Ami chided her. "Even if that were so, it's up to Mami whether or not she wants to tell us."

"I'm just saying, the way she puts it."

"What will you do now, Mami?" Makoto asked her junior. "You can enroll at Crossroads and finish where you left off."

"I have no plans to receive my education as of yet. There is much more of Azabu-Juuban I wish to explore. After that, well," she shrugged, "I'm not sure. Time is not my main concern."

"Then how will you support yourself? You can do so much with some high school education. There are a lot of opportunities to be had if you go back, graduate, and get a degree. Minimum wage isn't going to cut it."

"I will find something. You needn't worry, Makoto."

"I'm just concerned, is all. The economy may be picking up the slack, but that doesn't mean you're going to find a job right off the market. Competition's fierce."

"So I've heard. Ah, that reminds me, have any of you seen Rei? I tried calling her but haven't received an answer."

Minako raised an eyebrow. "Eh? You don't know? Rei's at school, at good ole Tokyo University I might add." She nodded proudly to herself, then looked questioningly at Ami. "Did I get that right?"

"Almost," Ami said. "She's attending _Toyo_ University, but I understand how you can misinterpret two words with similar pronunciations. Both Toyo and Tokyo University are established in the same area."

"Yeah, in Bunkyo Ward," said Makoto. She looked past the skyline with a distant gleam in her eye. "I used to date this one guy who lived in Bunkyo. He reminded me of my old senpai…."

"Every dog and pony reminds you of your old senpai," Minako quipped with a huff. Makoto responded by yanking on a particularly long strand of the former's hair.

"Rei's been out since this morning," Ami told Mami, who were ignoring the pair's antics. "If I remember correctly, she should be getting out at—let me see what time it is…at four o'clock. I don't think Rei is partaking in any extracurricular activities, so if you take the train now you should get there just as she's leaving the building."

"Thank you. I assume Rei has been very busy, so I'm hoping my presence will assuage her before she can settle into working on her assignments." She turned her head aside, to which Ami caught the tell-tale blush forming on her cheeks. "Well, actually," she stammered, "I'm hoping she hasn't read the texts I've sent her. I did type I would meet her by the entrance at the end of the day. I want to surprise her."

Ami giggled. "I think Rei will appreciate the company. She places such a high standard on her goals, more so than is considered normal for a university student (well, not exactly, because I must admit that I, too, am one of those people!). As you have said, it would do Rei a great deal of good to put her mind at ease, even if it's only for a little while."

"Yes, I agree." Mami bowed. "I should get going before I miss the train. Thank you for your time, senpai."

"Likewise. You're welcome to visit us any time, Mami. I know quite a few places the other girls aren't aware of." Ami chuckled sheepishly and scratched a cheek. "Like where I used to go to cram school, the lobby in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the quiet areas people go to when they want to study in Minato-ku."

"I'll be sure to ask you. Tell Makoto-senpai and Minako-senpai to take care." Mami turned and started walking.

Ami called behind the girls: "Makoto, Minako, Mami's leaving, so stop fighting for a moment and say goodbye to her."

Makoto and Minako ceased pulling at the other's face and, through clenched teeth, hailed, "'Bye Mami!" They resumed their squabble once their junior was out of sight.

Ami sighed and shook her head at the pair. "What did I do in my past life to deserve this?"

* * *

Rei glanced at the clock at the front of the classroom and almost groaned aloud. It was three-thirty and it had only been five minutes since she last checked the time. To make matters worse, she had been at school for the past seven hours, walking from class to class, writing notes and enduring her teachers' in-depth (if not long-winded) lectures. The individual at the forefront of the room—a wrinkled husk of a man filling in for the primary educator—was no exception.

Who was she kidding? School life was nothing like what was portrayed in manga and anime. At least at Crossroads the Senshi had to contend with youma that preyed on their acquaintances and dungeon-level eldritch abominations sought to conquer the known universe. Here, in Toyo University, there was absolutely _nothing_. No suspicious activity, no suspicious persons of interest, no suspicious out-of-place artifacts, nothing. Not even a whisper of luscious gossip that may or may not be foreshadowed in the immediate future. Random youma attacks in the middle of class were supposed to break the monotony, make the day a little more exciting. The absence of said random youma attacks in the middle of said class was not _helping_.

Rei huffed and jotted her pen across the spiral's lined surface, not particularly interested in the subject but exuding the pretense that she was so as not to be called out by the substitute. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to be anyway near here or anywhere else except patrolling the streets at night and meditating before the fire within the Hikawa Jinja. They were her only avenues, and both offered no amount of solace or answers.

Usagi…She hadn't seen Usagi since the morning following the attack. Rei wondered if she was still doing okay, if there was any change in her. Haruka and the Outers had stopped by over the weekend and told the Inners Usagi hadn't awoken but her vital signs were in the clear. Now that was all fine and dandy, but what explained their leader's coma? They had seen the mark on her forehead, a possible sign that whoever—or whatever—attempted to overwhelm her caused her to transform into Sailor Moon…but whether it was during or after the transformation was a mystery. Sufficient damage to the tiara would deactivate their Senshi form, so whether or not this assailant was a new enemy this proved Usagi had fought back.

Rei wanted to see her again, but real life and her inner fears restrained her from going. She was afraid she would run away again, afraid she would succumb to the pain everyone knew to be sadness and be witness to her own barriers crumbling to their foundations. Even if everyone wouldn't think her weak for showing such emotions, she didn't want them shown.

Someone had to be strong. Not just to Mamoru the Future King and the Senshi, but to the Tsukino family. Kenji and Ikuko and Shingo, they were suffering as much if not more than the rest. She thought of them. She thought of Luna, and wondered how she was fairing. No one had seen her, or that of Meiou Setsuna, in days.

_They're still watching that girl._ The one that can perform the one feat Setsuna couldn't do without dying: stop and resume the flow of time and space. Oh yes, Setsuna had her eyes on her—those of her own, Luna's, and the mechanical Lunadrone's in her possession—and she wasn't going to drop them until either the target closed in on Azabu-Juuban…or Setsuna couldn't stand waiting anymore for the slowpoke to pick up the pace and went out into the field, Garnet Key in hand and ready to rock.

Either way, they were going to meet. The question of 'when' could not be determined, but the Outers would no doubt be on their toes for anyone or anything in any environment. All the knowledge from their previous incarnations would be beneficent for whatever surprises were lying in store for them between now and the future.

Rei tapped the pen against her chin, a contemplative hum rumbling in the back of her throat. Aside from Luna and Setsuna, the Inners had received little intel from Haruka, Michiru, or Hotaru. What they garnered was gossip and rumors during their nocturnal outings, hushed whispers running on an oily undercurrent of worry and apprehension. The sky over Moriya was awash in a haze not unlike a fog, but when the townsfolk breathed in the moisture they could _taste_the coppery tang of blood, the heavy, cloying stink of rot and too-sharp cordite. Something fell had come, they said, and it was approaching like a Lovecraftian horror. Traffic, from what the Outers had heard on the news, was getting hit hard, especially on the Joban Expressway. Police units hailing from Tsukubamirai to Kashiwa were taking steps to redirect the travel flow away from the Moriya area, but this course of action didn't seem to have any effect on the minds of the common people.

The fire had shown her nothing, not a vision or a dream. Her crows, Phobos and Deimos, were gifted with the ability to detect the emotional and metaphysical changes in the atmosphere and, just like her, within the hearts and souls of humanity, and even they could not sense the darkness that had settled upon Moriya. Or, just as likely, they had and did not wish to alert their mistress of whatever danger lurked at this time.

What was going on out there? What was causing all this? It almost sounded like the subtle beginning of a homegrown terrorist plot or some form of meteorological phenomenon, and if it _was_ either one of those, it'd be all over the news. Which, technically, it was, but the Sailor Senshi knew better than to believe what was showing on the surface.

_I'll have to speak with Setsuna and Luna as soon as I see them. Maybe they'll allow me into The Brink._ Every time she asked they had turned her away, stating they didn't need the extra eyes or foci. She had never been a hunter like Minako in the Silver Millennium, but if they required her aid then she would sit in the midst of the time ribbons and cast an area-wide tracking spell. From there, answers would be received…or more questions would be raised.

The bell rang, signaling the end of class. Finally. _Thank Kami, I thought I'd never hear it._ She stowed away her belongings, barely lending an ear to the substitute reminding the class of tonight's homework, and booked out of the room. Forget homework; as soon as she got home she was going to hang that DO NOT DISTURB sign over the shoji door and give the futon the best damn face-plant it had since, like, _ever_. No assignments, no meditation, no thoughts, just a deep, deep, dreamless bliss.

When she arrived at the hall leading to the school's entrance, she was intercepted by a couple girls from both sides of the T-junction. She didn't have to look to know who they were: aside from being in the same history class, Hitomi and Kaede were the type of folk that loved to soak in juicy gossip and spread it like a plague to all the other fellows that thrived and leeched off it. They even had a favorite topic which they liked to discuss, a topic Rei found to be both flattering and embarrassing.

"Hello, Rei," said Hitomi. "How did your day go?"

"Ugh, too long for my liking," groaned Rei, running a hand down the valley of her face. "I have homework in all my classes, and they're due tomorrow. I just wanna go lay down and go to sleep."

"Well, you certainly can't do it here," said Kaede. "That would be most uncomfortable."

"You know what I mean."

"So," Hitomi drawled innocently, "how's that junior of yours? You know…the one from Mitakihara? Having fun together?"

"We're getting along _splendidly_," Rei answered warily and rolled her eyes. _Here we go._ "We get together when the opportunity's there, free of homework and house duties. She's only been here a week, so we're taking things one day at a time."

"And what do you and your _friend_ do in your free time?" asked Kaede with a waggle of her brows.

"Nothing of the sort that's on your perverted minds. I meet her at the apartments and we walk around Azabu-Juuban. Our feet carry us wherever they want us to go. We do whatever we please." She sighed. "Please don't put words in my mouth. We're just friends."

"But you speak so fondly of her!" said Hitomi.

"Doesn't your friendship mean anything to you?" Kaede beseeched melodramatically.

"Of course it does! I'm her senpai, she's my kouhai. She asks me a question and in return I offer her answers. Like, what is the minimum score you need to pass a college entrance exam? How do I know if a vision I experience is real and not a figment of my imagination? Or where's the best place in town you can buy yourself a slice of chiffon cake?" She pushed the door open and allowed her two classmates to go before her. "Mami and I are but two girls that have found a common ground. What we have is special; the same is applied to everyone else I relate with. It's a simple case of interpersonal female bonding, and that's all it will ever be."

"So you say," said Kaede.

"Yes," agreed Hitomi, nodding sagely in time to her friend. "So you say. We know there's more to the story than meets the eye."

Oh, _please_, not this again. "You're looking too deeply into things. I told you what we are and it's going to stay that way. End of story!" The parking lot loomed like a distant island on the opposite spectrum of the sea. Praise Kami for inspiring mankind with the idea to create faster public transportation. A little further…!

One of the girls, Kaede, clapped her smartly on the shoulder; no way in heaven or hell did Hitomi have a grip like iron. "Here, let's make a deal: introduce your girl to us and have her call you onee-sama while we're with you. You do that, and I guarantee you Hitomi and I won't have a fangirl attack. What do you say, Rei-onee-sama?"

"Begone, ero-otome!" Rei shook off her colleague, dug into her coat pocket, and slapped an ofuda on Kaede's forehead. She pushed her into Hitomi's waiting arms, cheeks simmering and free hand clutched in a knuckle-white fist. "Call me that again and I swear I'll do more than purge the _evils_ from your body! And lay off the _Marimite_! It ain't gonna happen!" She started forward, stopped, turned about-face and added, "I'll see you tomorrow!" Rei heaved a dramatic sigh. Hopefully this little incident wouldn't repeat itself again when the time came, like the last few days had. Hitomi she could tolerate for possessing the rare wonder that is common sense, but Kaede was a grade-A pain in the ass. At least she was smart to save it for after school and not during; Rei didn't think she could endure that kind of torture.

_Sleep first,_ she decided. _As soon as I wake up I'll get right to work. Tomorrow comes awful quickly. _She'd have to put off speaking with Setsuna and Luna until Sunday, when she was off from school. If she was lucky, she might run into them.

Rei resumed her trek to the parking lot. The breeze lulled her to complacency, carrying with it the spice of autumn and heady exhaust fumes. Vehicles were backing out and students walked alone or in groups on the journey home.

She stopped at the bottom tier of steps leading into the area and craned her neck skyward. An outline of the sun's ray rimmed an amorphous mass of cloud, bravely fighting to pierce through the shifting borders.

Footsteps echoed all around her, loud and full and empty like the heart of a slumbering giant. Laughter intermingling with the incoherent babble of multiple topics of conversation….

It wasn't the same.

It hadn't been. Not since…since….

Rei inhaled a lungful of air. She didn't taste blood, nor did she sample fear. _I'll get to the bottom of this, Usagi. Somehow, I'll find the answers we're looking for._"But where do I find them?" she murmured.

"Find what?"

Rei blinked and looked forward. She was surprised to see who it was walking up the pathway. "Mami? What are you doing here?" She hadn't expected to meet her at all today.

"Hello, senpai," the younger girl greeted. "You weren't aware I was coming to see you? I tried calling you."

"Ah ha," Rei chuckled. "Sorry about that. My phone's been on vibrate and I've been pretty busy. My breaks in-between classes aren't that long. Please don't be mad."

Mami giggled. "I'm not. I should've known better than to reach you during school hours. You did tell me you had a hectic schedule."

"'Hectic' doesn't even describe the payload the teachers give you," Rei scoffed, "but if I want my dreams to come true then I have no choice but to relinquish my free time in favor of daily pencil-pushing and page-turning labor. It's the only way I'll ever get by in this world, although…I worry sometimes what the future holds for me. I'm not as well-learned as some of the other classmates."

"I think senpai has what it takes to make it through the school year. It's still early in the semester to correct any past mistakes you've made. Besides," she smiled cutely, "you're a very smart girl, even if you say you're not. I believe in you."

Rei laughed and rubbed the back of her neck. "You're too kind. My grades really aren't all that bad…but I appreciate the thought. Thank you. I want to go as far as I'm able, but right now my main goal's getting through college and work on earning the credit hours for an Associate's degree."

"It sounds like it's a way off."

"It is, but fortunately I have the funds to pay for the classes I'm going to take." She tried to suppress the grimace and failed. Who was she kidding, it was only made possible because Good Old Dad—Hino Takashi—was a politician and had the Powers that befit a man of his position to set up a savings account and transfer all that wonderful moolah in there. That account had been active since before she could walk. "I'll be out of here within a couple years." Rei didn't need his help. Rei could handle herself as she had all her life.

Her brief change in facial demeanor did not go unnoticed. Mami took Rei's free hand in her own and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "You'll do fine. I know you will. As I've said before, you have enough time. Just focus on the present."

Rei smiled and squeezed back. "You're right. The present is all that matters."

"Mhm, but…Rei hasn't told me what she's trying to find. I wish she would…I might be able to help her."

"Oh…oh! You mean…that." There was no point in hiding it, even if 'it' pertained to the same thoughts circulating her mind day and night for the past week. "I was thinking about Usagi." How she was holding up, if she had woken.

Mami nodded, understanding. "Have you seen her yet?"

A ball of ice and guilt dropped into her gut. "No…I haven't. I'd like to…but it's been a long day. All I want to do right now is drive back, go home, and rest for a while." She scuffed her shoe against the gravel. "Does that make me a bad person, Mami?"

"No, of course not. Why would it?"

_Because I don't want the others to think I'm doing this on purpose. That I'm running away and afraid to face my biggest fear. That I don't care._ "Just curious," Rei answered. She switched her briefcase to the other hand and wiped at the palm of the other on her pants. "Anyway, you want to come over to the shrine for a little bit? I don't think you've been there, have you?"

"I haven't, but I've passed it many times when I take my walks."

"It's not much but it's quite the cozy abode, especially in the winter. I wouldn't ask for any other." She beckoned Mami and together they entered the parking lot. "Get comfortable. Traffic's going to be hell."

* * *

Day turned to night. A sliver of moon hung low amidst the peaks of skyscrapers and hundreds of thousands of multi-colored lights. The streets alive with nocturnal activity, people walking and people talking; people burning rubber and playing it loose in their cars and motorcycles; shady deals were being negotiated in hidden crevices and empty alleys. Stray dogs and cats were out in full force and full volume.

Under the stars Mamoru walked, hands tucked in his pockets, risking peripheral glances into the dark. "Are you sure we can't feel these things?" he murmured under his breath. "They could be an off-shoot of youma."

_Going by what you told me,_ said Kyouko,_ a youma's life signature can be felt the same way you would sense what's going on in your own body. Like all forms of life they share the same atomic structure but are in possession of vessels that are so vastly diverse no two creatures are exactly alike. They may or may not have eyes. They may or may not have ears. They may speak, they may not understand higher thought processes beyond basic instincts and primal urges, everything varies from one person to another. It's creation at its finest as it's ever been._

_But Witches are different, Chiba. They're not like us. They used to be, but not anymore. Your youma are the kind that can swim on both sides of the physiological pool; they're either capable of sapience rivaling that of our human intelligence…or parasites that sinks its struts into your brain and drain you of all the data comprising of the person inhabiting the body. __No…a Witch and her familiars come from within. Negativity is the driving force of corruption. And when a girl's Soul Gem becomes too corrupt…._

"She turns," Mamoru breathed. "Would her soul…still be intact?"

_No._ Quietly, somberly. _Once she turns, she's gone. A Witch's sole purpose is to feast on her victims, rob them of their hopes and dreams and leave them in despair. The more pure her victim is the tougher and more powerful she becomes. Doesn't matter if her victim's young or old, man and woman. She'll keep eating and eating and eating. She'll never be full until there's no one left to eat._

"If that ever happened, and the Witch is still hungry, then she'd have to resort to hunting her own species." The thought was a bitter pill in his mouth, one he could taste in the back of his throat. Mamoru hoped he was getting sick.

_I don't know. I never studied a Witch's behavior, only killed them for their Grief Seeds._ Which would cleanse the taint residing within the Soul Gem.

He rounded the corner, footsteps measured and too loud in the quiet of his mind. Car horns honked and rolled in opposite directions, buzzing like a swarm of angry hornets. "Why are you telling me this? I wasn't expecting you to come back much less open up to me." How she acted towards him was enough incentive to not push her and leave her by. Hell, he had figured she wasn't real and existed as a personality deviated from all the stress accumulating in the past week, a specter meant to drive him to the brink of madness. But she was real, she insisted on it. She offered no other explanation, and Mamoru, who wasn't in the mood to argue, conceded that, okay, maybe there was some truth to her words. A grain of salt, if he had to resort to clichés to describe the turmoil running rampant in his brain.

_For one, someone has to keep tabs on your sorry ass,_ she responded. _There's nothing I can do if you're taking the last train to Rock Bottom. Your girlfriends may be similar to Puella Magi, but if you pit them against a Witch they're going to be fucking boned._

"What do you mean? The Sailor Senshi have had more than enough experience to take down monsters twenty times their size. They can handle these Witches."

_Teamwork doesn't mean shit unless you're a Puella Magi. Only a Magi has the power to destroy a Witch and her familiar._

Mamoru's gut opened up beneath, dropping an iron wrecking ball to the bottom of his extremities. That meant…_oh no_.

_That's right, Chiba. Doesn't matter how much oomph they channel into their spells. If the Sailor Senshi get caught in the Witch's barrier—or in her labyrinth, when she's really hungry—they're as good as dead._

He stopped, stared at the sidewalk beneath his feet. The cement was chipped and covered in a thin sheet of granite and loose sediment. There were cracks, a million itsy-bitsy cracks spread across the surface like the web of some giant spider, but their patterns were meaningless, chaotic, unrefined; their edges crooked, vertices jagged. He could almost feel himself falling, could almost touch the sky and realize there was a ceiling made of glass and that the glass was breaking and when the glass shattered the sky and the stars would come crashing down and crush him to paste like an insect smothered against the grooves of a descending boot.

_(But the worst is yet to come. This is just the beginning.)_

_(It's early, but give it time. The day will come. Hell will be more than happy to remind you of what—and who—is at stake.)_

"Kyouko," he said aloud, evenly. "Has the worst of things finally come? Are there Witches in Azabu-Juuban?"

There was a pregnant pause, thick and leaden as molasses. The minutes ticked by, crawling at a snail's pace. Frustration mounted Mamoru's back like a lunatic monkey off its leash, and when he was sure she had left him in the dark (both literally and figuratively) and ready to swear up and down the street in a tempest, she answered. _No. I don't sense any Witches or familiars in this region, but out in Moriya,_ she snorted, _the people there have a reason to be afraid. The streets are swarming with the bastards._

"It's the fog," Mamoru concluded. "The fog is their barrier. But…people are still using the roads. Shouldn't they have been caught in the barrier?"

_Technically, yes. A Witch would mark them with their bite—a Kiss—and lure them into their territory. It's how they hunt. It's also how people go missing and are never seen again._

"Except people haven't been disappearing. If they had, it would have been on the news. So that means…."

_There's a Puella Magi fighting them._

"The girl that can stop time and not die." One girl against a horde of monsters, all by herself. Mamoru was amazed and horrified. What if she got killed?

Kyouko barked a single laugh. _She ain't gonna die, you pansy. She's too persistent. Better yet, she refuses to die. No, she won't let anything or anyone get in her way. Not even Death can get close to her._

Mamoru looked to the stars. "She must be strong, this girl."

_Yeah,_ said Kyouko quietly, and Mamoru sensed she was staring at them too. Searching for answers. _She is._

* * *

Sailor Uranus inhaled deeply the brisk night air and exhaled with a frown. "The wind…it bears the stink of blood. Can you taste it?"

Neptune, too, mimicked her partner's previous motions. She tucked strands of turquoise strands behind her ear. "Yes. It hangs like a smokescreen coughed by an untamed inferno. The sea…it also carries a perfume only Death Itself may wear, cloying and dew-laden like moss on a grave. Can you smell it?"

"Indeed. The fog creeps like a phantom, drifting in and out of shadows none will dare walk outside. It's hungry, thirsting, salivating and mixing with liquids contained within the flesh of vessels human and alien." Uranus breathed again. "It must be vanquished."

"I know, but we have to wait for Setsuna to give us the okay. It might not be safe yet." Their communicators were on standby, given the order by their elder to maintain their post at their house until further notice. Setsuna had been relaying data gathered from Lunadrone-3; the second was destroyed when it got caught in one of the girl's crossfire attacks.

"We're leaving as soon as the word leaves her mouth," said Uranus. "We stick around until the barrier pops up. When it closes and the bastards start pouring in, we hit them hard and we hit them fast. Leave no room for retaliation."

Neptune nodded. "If we can capture one of the monsters, I can infiltrate its mind with the Deep Aqua Mirror." The talisman wasn't just used to mete out weaknesses in a person or beast but bypass through the mind and retrieve invaluable information, a trait that had carried over from her previous life as a mage for hire prior to the creation of the Outer Sailor Soldier unit (which was hours after the Queen Serenity initiated the girls that would comprise the Inner Soldier squad). "Through it we can find the location of the mastermind and neutralize it."

"We won't have to," Uranus assured her. "We can ask that girl. She could point us in the right direction."

"But Setsuna's reports suggest the target has been moving southwest, starting from Tsukuba," Neptune mused. "Why is that? Could she be fleeing from them, hoping to throw them off-course?"

"I don't see why not. Stopping time at will has to be costing her energy and mana." Which was both unusual and extraordinary. The Outers were of the same mind this girl was a post-rebirth Earthling whose previous incarnation served under the Chronos Hegemony on Pluto, perhaps as an apprentice to the Soldier of Time. She may have even been a novice of the Children of Aeon, a cult that were blessed with the ability to jump between temporal dimensions…and on the battlefield as the planet's most elite and secret assassins, a group labeled the Espers (or so the myth goes). But no, Setsuna had said the girl was not reborn; she would have recognized the abnormal life signature people from the Silver Millennium shared.

"I suppose you're right. Still, I fear the target might be overwhelmed should she make that fatal mistake. It is a feat in itself she has not collapsed from exhaustion, given the constant fighting she's endured."

"She'll be fine," Uranus groused. "A couple more hours won't kill her."

"That's if Setsuna dispatches us tonight. Don't forget that."

Uranus clucked her tongue. "Baby, when have I ever? I never forget about you."

"And yet you forget to pay our bills," Neptune deadpanned.

"Aw come on, that youma totally ripped the bank from its foundations! None of us saw it coming, and I can't help that it's going to take a couple months to rebuild from scratch!" She heaved a dramatic sigh and shook her head. "You need to have more faith in me!" Neptune didn't have an answer to that. She put her back to her partner and continued staring at the stars suspended above a radiant horizon.

Uranus glanced over her shoulder at the other occupant on the roof. Saturn was standing at the edge on the opposite side, short black hair caressing her knobby shoulders, willowy frame straight and upright against a breeze that might knock her over. The Silence Glaive was clutched loosely in her hand, its tip gleaming deadly as frostbite. She had not spoken in the past hour.

_She must have fallen asleep. That or she tuned herself out._ The Soldier of Wind crept up to her. "Hey Hotaru, you awake?"

"Don't startle her, Haruka," Neptuned warned her, watching her partner from the corner of her eye.

Uranus pressed on nonetheless. "Wakey wakey, kiddo. You can't fall asleep yet." She rested her hand on the girl's shoulder. "C'mon, I know you can hear me—" She leaped away as the Silence Glaive whistled through the space she had just occupied. "Whoa!"

_"Keep your hands off me,"_ Sailor Saturn growled. Her voice, once high and youthful, was deep and dark, rumbling like an ominous aftershock. Her syllables rolled roughly on her tongue. _"Touch me again, and I shall see to it that your head is impaled and posted as a warning to any and all who dare disturb me."_ A purple, almost black aura oozed from her body and engulfed her, and around the Outer Senshi there were scents of bone meal, smelted iron, ozone, and rotten flesh.

"What the hell?" Uranus exclaimed.

Neptune coughed and put a hand over her mouth and nose. "Haruka, her eyes! Look at her eyes!"

She did, and what she saw was not Hotaru's normal violet irises. Instead they were a pale, phantom blue and glowed from within her corneas, pulsing intermittently like the light from a firefly—the creature she had been named after.

No. Those eyes…Uranus had only seen them once in her other life: they belonged to a woman who hailed from Oberon and was on the run for selling government-sanctioned secrets to Queen Beryl in the early years of the War. Uranus had personally dealt with the traitor herself and nearly lost her life because of it.

Those eyes were Death Knight eyes, the toughest of the tough and the most experienced all the warriors in the Solar System combined. They were old and they were versatile—swift as a hunter in pursuit, more powerful than a swing from a warrior's weapon, harboring mana reserves so vast they could summon the most fearsome, dreadful demons few shaman and warlocks were capable of. But the most shocking of all? The Death Knight was a creature of unlife; a person reanimated upon death and bestowed the gift of magic…_fel magic_.

Uranus didn't know which was worse: the fact that Tomoe Hotaru, Sailor Saturn, was a Death Knight or the fact that Tomoe Hotaru _had been reincarnated twice before_ in lives she should not have lived. It was impossible. She was the Soldier of Death, of Destruction, of Silence. Nowhere in her memories or Neptune's or Pluto's did it show Hotaru as a Soldier of Rebirth. Heaven Above and Hell Below, she hadn't even _existed _in the Silver Millennium, but...that was a different story for a different time.

Uranus swallowed her heart back in its rightful place. She responded warily, "Why are you here?" _Steady, girl. Don't show fear. Don't let it show…._

Sailor Saturn—or rather, the spirit of Saturn the Death Knight—harrumphed at the Senshi like a holier-than-thou noblewoman. She retracted the Silence Glaive and smartly rapped the end against the rooftop. The steady, unwavering firmness in her posture reflected the decades, possibly centuries, of military experience hammered into every bone and muscle until it was as adamantine as the surface of a diamond. _"Why? I have _always _been here, sleeping within this vessel since the moment of her third rebirth. We are each other's masters, observing the world through visions not our own but shared regardless. We see everything: the sundering of fragile earth; the churning of roaring water; the shattering of sky and star as the thunder of nature clashes against the thunder of man. Omniscient we are not, but omnipresent we have become. Nothing is beyond us."_

"By the Gods," Neptune uttered in a stunned whisper. Exactly how Uranus felt. They knew Hotaru was very powerful, second to Sailor Moon actually, but to be in possession of ancient powers that—even in the Golden Age—was considered ancient and mere myth? She couldn't put it in words.

Uranus worried at her lip, pondering. "What made you wake up?" she asked after a brief reprieve. "You couldn't have taken over my friend's body just because you wanted to give us a scare."

_"Hotaru wishes not to bear the burden of our findings. I am merely here to spare her the trouble that is to follow hereafter."_

"What trouble?" Neptune asked with an inflection of concern in her tone. "What do you have to report?"

_"The fog over Moriya and its surrounding areas has been lifted. Target has successfully eliminated enemy threat. Lunadrone-3 is proceeding en route to The Brink with the footage as we speak."_

Uranus allowed a smug smile to appear. "See? What did I tell you?" she said to Neptune. "The girl lived."

"What's the target's status?" asked Neptune.

_"Alive, but she has exerted both her primary and tertiary mana reserves. It will be several days before they are fully regenerated."_

"What about this trouble you mentioned? Could you elaborate on that?"

Saturn's aura fluctuated wildly, the glow in her eyes dimming and brightening like faulty wiring in a light bulb. Her grip on the Silence Glaive faltered, tightened, fingers flexing tensely. She bit her lip until she drew blood, but the flickering did not abate. _"It's…Usagi,"_ she forced out.

Uranus's eyebrows arched high in alarm. "Usagi? What's wrong with Usagi?"

_"Usagi's heart...it's stopped beating. Monitor…flat-lining. Doctors…nurses…rushing to resuscitate."_ Her body shuddered, her voice trembling between high and low pitch. _"Wake_…UP_…."_ The light was extinguished like a candle blown out by the wind, and Sailor Saturn the Senshi collapsed to her knees weeping.

* * *

Across Azabu-Juuban, the other Senshi of Queen Serenity's forces were lost within themselves, both in their thoughts and their actions.

Minako lay in bed, Artemis curled at her feet and staring at the ceiling, reminiscing past battles in the lives she had lead. She wondered if she would be able to protect Usagi from the monsters plaguing Moriya. She wondered, as she sank into a dreamless slumber, what this Madoka person was like to Mami.

Sailor Mercury and Sailor Jupiter were leaping from high rise to spectacular high rise, sliding between shadows and star-shine as their feet touched roofs with nary a sound. It was their turn to patrol the city, and so far they had not seen hide or hair of the beasts that had been described to them by the Outers.

Rei sat in _seiza_ before a roaring, wood-crackling inferno with Phobos at her left and Deimos at her right. The flames cast shimmering patterns across her face, highlighting the hurt, anger, and betrayal set firmly there.

Mamoru was changing into his night clothes. He had his shirt buttoned halfway when his eyes fell on the box of pocky on the end table. He hadn't touched it since he had returned from the Crown Arcade, afraid it would elicit another bout of high-octane nightmare fuel; Kyouko hadn't spoken a word about it. Curious, he steeled himself for the impending shock and touched the box. What flashed through his mind was not the white cat-thing being beaten to death but a girl. Her hair was short and straight and the same ocean blue as Ami's, and her body was wrapped in a long flowing white cape. She gazed upon a star-studded sky, her expression one of sad, virgin innocence. A hand—_Kyouko's hand_—caressed her shoulder, and the girl turned to her as a woman who has been condemned to a life sentence in jail without parole. _"I'm such a fool," _the girl lamented, and then the memory was ripped from him like the last roll of film, bestowing Mamoru a potion mixed with dread, heartache, and longing. He was reminded of his Usako, and his chest constricted with a pain as familiar and immeasurable as a lover's stroke.

Mami pulled her fist out of the hole she made in the bathroom mirror, bloody cataracts drip-dropping into the sink's bowl-shaped drain. She appraised her reflection, frightened and repulsed.

Setsuna observed the time-stopping girl through the Space-Time Door while Luna extracted the data from Lunadrone-3 and uploaded to the computer terminal. Irises the shade of amethyst absorbed the projected image as the girl shakily removed the gun barrel away from her temple and put her face in her hands.

At the same time, in Moriya, Kyubey appeared behind Homura and congratulated her on another splendid victory. Homura cursed him to hell and filled his body with hot lead, then ejected a fresh clip into the pistol and began walking. She was a fool to have contemplated it. No, she would not surrender. She would not give that bastard Incubator the satisfaction. She would find Madoka and deliver her to sanctuary at any cost.

At Crossroads Hospital, the orderlies were in a state of frenzy, fuelled by panic, sweat, and adrenaline. One nurse was administering defibrillator pads on Usagi, jumpstarting her heart on a count of three from Dr. Himari, the Tsukino family doctor. Another monitored her vitals with increasing trepidation and bewilderment. A third applied medicine through the IV line. Then, just as the orderly was about to deliver another shock, the heart monitor ceased its monotonous dirge. Usagi's forehead crinkled in the middle and her lips formed a thin tense line; a few minutes later, her features relaxed, peacefully unaware of what had just transpired.

The time was twelve o'clock midnight. September third faded into the past like the transition of seasons.

Somewhere in the dark, a girl giggled and grinned like the Cheshire cat. Everything was going according to plan.


	13. Dreams of the Shore Near Another World 2

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**13.  
****Dreams of the Shore Near Another World II**

Usagi awoke to the sound of whispers: high, cavernous, whispers filtering in one ear and out through the other. Her head buzzed with the constant rise and fall of volume. She lay there and listened to them, but she could not understand. There were no words, only incoherent babble left behind and forgotten.

A red film coalesced behind her eyes, indicating light. She did not open them; they were leaden and full of cotton. Usagi fought to control them, and with great reluctance—be it on her part or her body's or another influence that was beyond her—she cracked her lids up halfway.

_Where am I?_ This wasn't the same area she'd been in before, the wasteland that harbored no life but ruined desolate earth from horizon to horizon. No, this place was dark as the midnight hour, and there were_ stars_. An infinite canvas of star clusters, constellations, satellites, drifting asteroid belts, winking comets, eerie nebulae, and softly luminous planets wheeled high above her.

Clueless as she was, Usagi released a content sigh. It was like being in an observatory, tilted so far back in the chair her head was submersed in a pool of her own flaxen locks, staring up at the domed ceiling while the narrator's sonorous voice explained about the Solar System and how the universe suddenly erupted to life in the form of the Big Bang. It made her ill at ease to be in such a position, but here…wherever 'here' was…balance was absolute. There was no fear of being overwhelmed by objects—and concepts—too large for the human mind to grasp. Everything was alright.

But then she noticed something shimmering at the bottom of her vision, and when she looked down the world, the universe, folded on itself and shrank into a fine, delicate point that almost felt ritualistic.

Even from this far away, Usagi recognized the pink-haired girl immediately. She was standing with two other females, one with a fiery mane pinned up in a ponytail, the other with short blue tresses touching the smooth range of her shoulders. Their faces were young and their cheeks round, but their eyes weary and strained, webbed at the corners as though they had witnessed horrors so unfathomable they had aged them well beyond their years. _It couldn't have been those monsters,_ Usagi mused. _It's something else._ Except she didn't know what that was; a gut feeling was all she had to rely on, and that in itself wasn't much. Still, Usagi wished she had the answers to what 'it' entailed.

They were gathered around an orb of light, a myriad of rainbows banishing shadows into eternal oblivion. Red, orange, green, blue, purple, yellow, brown, grey, pink, shifting intermittently as a kaleidoscope changes lens and distorts the present image into a mosaic reminiscent of stained glass windows. Usagi squinted, and through the glare managed to discern the shapes within.

It was a hologram of the Solar System. Static flickered and rippled as though one were adjusting a pair antennae affixed to the top of an analog television set. The Sun punctured the dark like the cone from a flashlight. The girls gazed upon it with ageless, statuesque visages.

They began speaking. Usagi strained her ears and listened as best as she could despite the hushed quiet in their voices.

_"They're gettin' antsy," _said the Red Girl. _"They've no idea what they're gonna do. I don't blame 'em."_

_"That's not all: She's replenished. There's been an increase in fog activity,"_ the Blue Girl supplied. _"It's hanging all over Chiba and half of Saitama."_

The Pink Girl looked worryingly at the Blue Girl. _"Is Homura still…?"_

_"No,"_ she answered grimly. _"She just crossed into Chiba not too long ago. I'm sorry, Madoka."_

The Red Girl scuffed at the ground, which was as equally black and eternal as their surroundings. _"I fucking hate this."_

_"Things will get better, Kyouko," _the Pink Girl, Madoka, assured her. _"There's plenty of time left until—"_

_"Until _what_? We fuck up _AGAIN?" Her hair flew wildly as she shook her head. _"I don't wanna do this anymore."_

_"None of us do,"_ the Blue Girl said. _"As long as the Incubators continue to exist…."_

_"One time is bad enough. _Thirteen _times is where I cross the line."_

_"You should've thought of that before you signed the contract."_

_"No one told you to fucking bring your boytoy from the brink!"_

_"You take that back!"_ Both girls approached the other and knocked their foreheads together, glaring into each other's eyes. The hologram snapped and cracked in a burst of white noise.

_"Kyouko, Sayaka, please!"_ Madoka pleaded. _"You shouldn't be fighting!"_

_"Tell that to her,"_ Sayaka growled. _"Always looking to cause trouble wherever she goes. Girl doesn't know when to quit."_

Kyouko sneered. _"Heh, at least my pissing and moaning didn't turn me into a Witch. If I hadn't pulled you back, you'd have been breaking more than a buncha lonely hearts."_

_"You drove me to change…."_

_"But it's the truth. Not my fault Kamijou put his head on Hitomi's knockers instead o' yours—"_

Like liquid lightning, Sayaka unsheathed her sword and lashed out. The blade stopped mere millimeters from cutting into the girl's neck. _"Shut up,"_ she hissed. _"Fucking shut it BEFORE I GODDAMN CARVE YOU—"_

"Please stop," said Usagi, voice hoarse with disuse.

The girls jumped as if they had been struck by an electric shock. Their eyes tore from the other and locked onto the prone Sailor Senshi. Madoka, whose mouth had opened in apparent protest, stared in reverent awe. Usagi squirmed and fidgeted; they looked so…_entranced_. It reminded her of the day when she met Luna for the first time and heard the Mau-cat speak—speak in the _human tongue_—and told her she was the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, destined to fight youma and find the legendary Moon Princess, who would rise and terminate the darkness of the Negaverse once and for all. This, however, simply made her uncomfortable.

She didn't let it linger too long. "I don't understand what's going on, but" she pushed herself up into a sitting position, limbs weighed down by iron "if you keep fighting…you'll only be hurting yourselves and make Madoka feel sad." Placing her entire weight on her body, and with great effort, Usagi slowly and staggeringly rose to her feet. When she caught her breath, she lifted her head and smiled at them. "Friends have to stick together through the good and the bad, the thick and the thin. If you don't work to a reach the conclusion, it'll be much more difficult to solve your problems than it is when you're working alone. Isn't that right, Madoka?"

Madoka nodded numbly. _"Yes,"_ she said. _"You're right. I…I don't want us to be torn apart…not when things are like this."_ She stared at her hands, which were cradling the image of a blue-green Earth suspended in nothingness. _"There's so much at stake right now. We can't afford to slip up this time."_

"Do you see?" Usagi inquired Kyouko and Sayaka. "Whatever happened between you two in the past…you need to put that behind you or you won't get anywhere. Do you understand me?" She glanced at the latter and gestured at her blade, cool and assertive. "Lay down your weapon."

Sayaka glared at Usagi. Usagi waited, undeterred, like a desperado challenging the town sheriff's dread gaze in a Mexican standoff.

_"'m sorry,"_ Kyouko mumbled. She grabbed Sayaka by the wrist and gently lowered the sword away from her. _"I spoke out o' line. It won't happen again."_ She turned her head aside, shy and humbled. _"I mean it."_

Sayaka scoffed. _"Whatever."_ She sheathed her weapon and whirled around, cape rolling in like combers on an approaching tide. _"Your plan had better work, Madoka. If we fail, there won't _be _a next time…or a future for _you_."_ She leveled a sidelong glance at Usagi. _"After all, I hear thirteen's a pretty unlucky number."_

"I'm not sure I follow," Usagi shrugged.

_"It should've stayed that way…but no,"_ she sighed, _"things don't work out that way. Not in our favor. It never does."_

"I can help. Madoka said I was needed—"

_"To be free and to set free,"_ the person in subjection recited. _"Your—_our_—objective has not altered. However, the matter of how and when we're to execute it remains to be seen."_

Usagi's shoulders slumped. "What do I do then? There must be something."

_"That's the problem. There_ is_ nothing you can do."_ Kyouko sighed. _"Not now, not yet. The only thing you can do is to wait."_

"Wait? Wait for wait?"

_"To wake up,"_ said Madoka. She took one step forward, and when Usagi blinked the girl was standing right in front of her; yet it wasn't her, for the girl had become a woman. Her hair was longer and flowed behind her like gossamer strands, her face sharp and angular. A pair of irises the color of citrine glowed fields of wheat bathed in liquid sunshine, so rich and sublime Usagi could almost drown in them.

Light particles formed from wings composed of pure energy fluttered and dissipated like snowflakes on an overcast day. Madoka, or the person who was wearing Madoka's face, brought two fingers to Usagi's face. _"This is going to hurt."_ She pressed them against her forehead, pushed the tips into the greasy sheen between her brows.

And there was blue-white fire, there was erratic electricity, there was intense light spilling down from the center of a massive magnifying glass, there was magma boiling at the core of an unstable volcano, there was acid chewing through toughened adamantine and titanium alloy, there were parasites tearing the cords and sinews of her brain, _and there was PAIN SO MUCH PAIN!_

Usagi opened her mouth and screamed, but not a sound escaped her.

* * *

She awoke gasping; gulping hungrily for air an innate part within her knew she had been deprived of. So she laid there, the ground at her back cold, wet, and rough as notched knives, rain cascading all around her as though the heavens were in mourning. Far away, over an alien horizon, lightning danced and thunder grumbled.

_How? How did she do that? Why?_ Usagi got up and wiped soaking amber fronds from her face. What she saw chilled her blood. "Wh-What?" The world was black and grey. Slabs of concrete, debris and the skeletal remains of wind turbines and skyscrapers marked the land in every direction, a masterpiece of bleak, apocalyptic despair. "What happened here? This…This isn't…." Azabu-Juuban, was it? Horror clutched at her core. "No…No…it can't be."

This isn't real.

THIS ISN'T REAL.

_"MADOKA!"_

Usagi returned to her senses. That didn't belong to any of the other girls she had met. Who could that be? A cherry corona suffused among the low-lying mist like a summer sunrise. Curiosity piqued, she broke into a run. She splashed into puddles, climbed hillocks of twisted scaffolding, and cleared mounds of plastered concrete obstructing her path.

The light had dimmed considerably when she arrived, and it was to a scene that rooted her in place. Two girls were gathered next to a girder, its underside smattered in a coat of blood. One of them was the adult Madoka, kneeling beside the support beam with eyes closed and hands in prayer. And the other...she stood behind the winged Madoka, beaming with a smug triumph that is achieved when sensitive matters are resolved in a manner deemed immoral and underhanded.

Something was writhing on the latter's back. It blended seamlessly in the gloom, but Usagi discerned it…them…coiling and thrashing in the air as though they were the heads of a hydra. One of these…tentacles…was straight and rigid, extending past the person and…no…

It protruded through Madoka's neck, blood dribbling from its pointed tip.

The girl behind her smiled (AND IT WAS RED), a slice of _(CRESCENT WHITE TEETH DIPPED IN THICK, DROOLING AMBER)_.

Tears blurred Usagi's vision. Her head swam in a sulfuric inferno.

___(She finds purchase against the back of a dying tree and pushes off the cement like a marionette. A crimson rivulet leaks beneath the fractured circlet on her brow and splits into a delta at the ridge of her nose._

_(The girl who had called for her aid—who at one point looked so fragile and scared and utterly tormented—stalks forward with the gait of a predator. The world collapses around them, peeling like the last sheaf of leaves on a tree hibernating for the winter. Gone are the swing sets, ladders, monkey bars; in its place is a raging, tumultuous sea giving birth to untamed eddies and eldritch whirlpools, the sky a hellish expanse of funnel clouds, sanguine rain, and the wailing of mankind as their souls ascended to an unknown frontier. There is not a stretch of land in sight; none save for the patch they stand on._

_(She tosses the revolver into the ocean, which lands with a splash that is lost to the crack of booming thunder. Eight sleek, slippery tentacles emerge from her back, feelers tasting, salivating, snapping at the air for flesh and bone and muscle._

_(A low, maniac giggle burbles up the column of her throat past her lips. One of the tentacles wraps around her hand and morphs into a green, wickedly curved cleaver, its teeth clean and deadly. "At last, a morsel I can take the time to divulge on! Them smoothskins are barely satiable…ah, but you...you!" She exhales a lusty, shuddering breath. "Just the thought makes me mouth water! So much hope, so much love! I will make you despair!")_

"Why," she whispered thickly. "Why are you doing this?"

Madoka's eyes opened and tilted them up at the monster. She smiled. _"Hello again, old friend. I've missed you."_

_"Your friend ain't here no more. She belongs to me."_ Smirking._ "She _is _me."_

_"I don't believe that. I know you're still in there…somewhere. You always have...just like the rest of us."_

_"Really? You ain't no saint; I recall ye joinin' the feast that one time. You were such a ravenous little bitch, yes indeed."_

_"Homura didn't have the heart to shoot me. I don't blame her. There's nothing more painful than watching your loved ones die."_

_"It's even more painful when one o' yore own does the killin'."_

_"You didn't kill them. Not this time. Your body—"_

_"Is my body. My heart is my heart. My mind…is my mind."_

_"We're all imperfect. We make mistakes and we learn from them. I have many regrets, regrets I wish I could take back and rectify. I, too, am not innocent, for the crimes I've committed, the pain I've caused…I am no worse than the demon inhabiting your body."_

_She snorted laughter. "Me? A demon? Little goddess, I am more than a demon. I am a Witch! I am the Devil that roams the earth, the Devourer of Worlds! __I am perfection. I am impervious." _A pink tongue poked between her lips and ran the length of her teeth. _"You fools don't stand a chance. Not now. Not ever."_ She gave the sword the ghost of a twist.

"No, stop!" Usagi cried. She tried to run, but instead lurched forward and rocked back like a recoiled spring. She looked down and saw her legs were wrapped in thick bands of kudzu. A frustrated whine tickled her vocal chords as she pulled and pulled to no avail. "Don't hurt her!"

More blood gushed from her neck, dribbled over cracked lips as if from a leaking pipe. She cracked open her eyes in slits and unfolded her hands. Floating in between them was a tiny ball of light. _"Maybe you're right. Maybe it is impossible. Doing it over and over again without success...I just want to go to sleep. That's all I ask."_

_"Then allow me to grant you your wish,"_ the Witch whispered silkily. A tentacle slithered up Madoka's arm and caressed her cheek. _"Let me be your angel, Madoka. Let me set you free."_

_"I'm sorry. I can't accept that."_ She tilted her head back and held slit, crimson irises framed by loose, disheveled hair. _"If I can't share a future with my family and friends…with you…then the world isn't worth fighting for."_ Her fingers cradled protectively around the orb. _"It wouldn't be the same, and you know it. That's why…I'm willing to try again. One last shot. And if that doesn't work…I'll still forgive you. It's not your fault…and neither is it the person who became Walpurgisnacht."_ She clasped her hands, and in a brilliant flash there was light.

The girl—Witch? Walpurgisnacht?—stumbled away, blinded, howling. _"STUPID GIRL! Ye can't defy fate! Your demise is inevitable!"_

_"Then let's die together,"_ Madoka said sleepily. _"Surely—one of these timelines—we'll find the exit to the hell we've brought upon ourselves."_ She fell forward and amidst a monsoon of luminous, whirling feathers and energy particles from disintegrating wings did not rise again.

Usagi cried as the light engulfed her, her world filled with shrieks of shrill, inhuman rage and earth-shattering thunder.

* * *

But some rational part in the gloom of her mind made the connection that _maybe_ it wasn't Walpurgisnacht screaming. That no, it couldn't be her, because why would they ring so loudly in her ears? Why would her head rattle and pound so hard, so fiercely her innards wanted to burst?

She witnessed herself from both within and outside her body, suffering a bout of paroxysm in the middle of a void as deep and stygian as the dark behind one's eyelids just before sleep is come. Kyouko was sitting on her stomach and pinning her wrists to the black above her with one hand in flaxen fronds, mouth working in a litany she couldn't decipher. Sayaka stood in front of them, sword drawn and glaring at a sea of red faces frozen in jawless terror, swimming, weeping, undulating.

A woman laughed: rich, sonorous, teasing.

Something slinked between the bloodied shadows. A bony finger prodded her very being, chill and dreadful.

_"Hahahahaha…."_

There it was again, the outline of a diamond…with the silhouette of arms open in an embrace.

What _was_ that?

_"U-SA-GI…."_

It emerged like a breaching whale, descending like a star foretelling the doom of humanity; a smile as crimson as a pomegranate penetrated the inky gloom, and it shone upon the trio as a cone of light at the end of a radioactive tunnel.

_"F-e-e-d m-e..._

_"F-e-e-d m-e…."_

Sound returned. The first words out of Kyouko's mouth were, _"…shit, shit, shit, shit, oh shit! C'mon, breathe! Breathe!"_

_"Hurry up!"_ Sayaka yelled, tension teetering at the edge of her voice. _"She's almost here!"_

_"Ah fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"_ Kyouko glanced over her shoulder and whined. She turned back, pressed the heel of her palm harder into Usagi's forehead. _"Okay, okay, how'd it go again? Fuck, fuck, fuck...!"_

_"DO SOMETHING!"_ With a wave of her weapon, blades materialized around Sayaka and spun a frantic orbit. An arcane circle appeared below her feet.

_"I'm working on it!"_

_"M-o-r-e…."_

_"Okay! Okay...here we go…here we go." _Her grip flexed and clenched, tugged at the roots. A murmuring susurrus stirred beneath her breath, hurried, panicked:

_"Crux sancta sit mihi lux  
__Non draco sit mihi dux.  
__Vade retro satana  
__Numquam suade mihi vana.  
__Sunt mala quae libas.  
__Ipse venena bibas—"_

_"She's here!"_ The swords ceased their spinning and pointed their frostbite tips at the silhouette. The pattern intensified, blasting off a wave of heat, ozone, and copper. _"Get ready!"_

_"Dammit, no! I need more time!"_

_"M-o-r-e…."_

Kyouko slammed a fist against the nonexistent floor, shaking with raw emotion. _"It's not fair…she's adapting too fast! It's not right!"_

_"Kyouko, I need you here NOW!"_

She swallowed and for an eternity sat on Usagi breathing. Her hand released its hold on her hair and snatched a spear that, she assumed, had been placed at her side. Then she lifted her head, sniffed, and uttered grimly in that ancient, peculiar tongue. _"Si deus est, potest ille miserere nobis."_ If there is a god, may He have mercy on our souls.

With ashen, doom-laden eyes, Kyouko got off her and charged straight into the darkness of hell.

Usagi had calmed. The Holy powers imbibed in the incantation allowed her body to relax, her life signature settling and stabilizing to a normal state. The fire in her brow dimmed to a numb, pleasant warmth.

What were these girls? Kyouko and Sayaka and Madoka? They were definitely not Sailor Senshi; their status would have been denoted by their tiara and planet sigil. Were they off-worlders then, like Ail and An? Maybe they were like Mamoru, because no one on this planet except the clergy and post-rebirth Earthlings was capable of exercising 'time-lost' artes like white/black magicks, even those as old as Paladin Holy magic.

Or perhaps it was none of the above. Maybe they were something else, something akin to Sailor Senshi. That jewel on Kyouko's chest couldn't have been a Star Seed; she'd been dead in an instant. So what did this mean?

And where was Madoka?

_"G-I-V-E…_

_"M-E…_

_"M-O-R-E…."_

Usagi wasn't able to ponder it. She looked up into the contorted faces, up into a darkness she had thought impenetrable as the thing bloomed like an ill-gotten flower in the dregs of the coldest, loneliest mountain in the middle of nowhere. There was a flash of creaking, trundling gears and a face sculpted of flawless marble. It did not have eyes, but it had a smile. A wide red smile.

It opened its mouth, and

* * *

"Why aren't you here with us?"

"Huh?" Back in her body, awake and not at all disoriented by the abrupt shift in reality, Usagi was staring up into a milky, curdled sky blocked partially by a new, familiar face. "Minako? What's the matter? You look so—"

"You know I can't do this on my own," she complained. "I'm just a soldier who follows orders. Giving orders is _your_ job, _your_ destiny. You're supposed to keep us together." Keep the Sailor Senshi in order and prevent chaos from disenfranchising them.

"What? But I do take care of you. I take care of all my friends."

"Then why are you helping us?" Ami's curly head appeared over the edge and glared down at her. "We need you. The city needs you. Why do you ignore us?"

"Ignore you? I haven't—"

"Of course you are!" Rei snarled, joining her friends. Her brow was scrunched in a furious, vertical line. "You're sleeping the day away while people are driven from the streets with their tails between their legs. There are things crawling in the dark and the police can't do shit about it!"

"Yeah, so why don't you wake up and get your act together?" Makoto, too, was just as livid. "Azabu-Juuban needs its hero. Without you, there is no Sailor Senshi!"

"Don't bother. You should know how the little kitten is. All play and no work makes for a very lazy, irresponsible leader." Haruka stood among them, an arm wrapped round Michiru and another on Hotaru. "She does nothing all day but stare at the wall and dream dreams that will never be. Who would want to believe in someone like that?"

"Who does she think she is, leaving the safety of her home in the middle of a stormy night?" Luna hissed down at her, ears folded to the back of her head. "And for what, because some disembodied voice _said so_? I should never have christened you Sailor Moon!"

"Weak! Yellow!" snarled Artemis, bearing his tiny teeth. "Look at the mess you've made! We're all going to die!"

"He is correct," said Setsuna as she stopped at the head of the assembled group. "Because of your reckless actions, the time-stream has been altered. Crystal Tokyo will never be established. Chibi-Usa will never be born. The world will never be at peace so long as the Queen and her Nests roam the streets. You have doomed us, Usagi, and there is nothing you can do to change that fate. _Our_ fate."

"No," Usagi breathed disbelievingly. "No! That can't be true! It…I…she needed me, someone! I couldn't ignore her! I had to help! I wanted to! If I hadn't—"

"You should've just let her die," echoed a stronger masculine voice, and from the edge Mamoru lingered like a coroner observing a fresh corpse. Cool, detached…uncaring. "You know in your heart it's what she wanted…but no, you didn't give her that did you? You wanted her to suffer, to relive the nightmare over and over again until there's nothing left of the person to save." He sighed. "Poor, innocent Usako. Why must you be so kind?"

"I don't understand. What hasn't gotten into everyone?" Usagi glanced at each face. "I did the right thing…didn't I? I wasn't aware she'd try to hurt me…but I had to fight, too. Not just for myself, but also for that girl. Killing her…the state she was in…how would that free her? How would it make her whole again? Killing her would mean one less person in the world and a lot of people sad and unhappy. I…I can't. I can't do that." Not to her, not to anyone. Even if her friends pleaded with her, she wouldn't. Could not under any circumstances.

Mamoru gave her a look that was both commiserative and disappointed. With an arm he ushered the girls and two cats back. "As I thought; you cannot be swayed; however, that doesn't mean you should change. If you can't adapt and do what must be done— can't avert the future looming over us with each passing day— then all hope is lost. You will be held accountable for our extinction." His hands dipped behind the edge. A rusty creak cracked in the dead silence. "I had hoped you had it in you. Guess I was wrong."

"Mamo-chan!" As Usagi was sitting up something plowed into her stomach and knocked her flat. From where she lay she looked at what had caused it. It was a mound of dirt. "What the…?"

"Hey Rei, you can fill 'er up _after_ I close this thing, you dig?" Mamoru said on the off-hand, darting a glimpse over his shoulder.

"Well hurry up! I want to be initiated ASAP!"

"Oi, I thought _I_ was the leader," said Minako.

"Not anymore you aren't! The Inner Senshi unit is mine!"

"As if!"

Mamoru rolled his eyes. "So impatient," he mumbled to himself. "Okay girls," louder this time, "get your shovels ready. It's time to put those babies to use."

Dirt? Thing? Shovels?

Usagi studied the location she was in, and horror dropped into her gut like a lump of lead.

She was in a grave. Mamoru was holding the lid of a casket and the girls—her _Senshi_, her _friends_, her _family_—were going to _bury her alive_.

The shadow loomed closer and larger as jaws closing to swallow a bit of morsel. "No! Stop! Mamo-chan! Everyone! Sto—"

_Click._

* * *

_Usagi…_

_Usagi…_

_Help me…_

_I'm so scared…_

_Please…_

_It hurts…so much…._

_I_

_N e e d_

_Y o u…._

* * *

Her plea

Was absorbed

By the **darkness**.

* * *

_Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—_

beep…

_Beep…_

**_BEEP…._**

* * *

_"Usagi. Usagi. You can wake up now."_ Something soft and silky caressed the curve of her cheek.

She turned her head away. "No," she mumbled. "No more. Go away."

_"It's okay, Usagi. You're safe now."_ The sensation lifted for a moment, then settled in the split of her hair. _"Open your eyes."_

A pause. "Madoka?" She stirred, her vision unfocused and blurry, but as it cleared she was flooded with relief to see it was indeed not the woman but the girl. Her gloved fingers were threaded in blonde, wispy locks.

Madoka smiled. _"Thank goodness. I thought we were going to lose you."_

Groggily, as if made dumb by a powerful drug, "What just happened?"

_"I showed you a fragment of the past, what we've been dealing with for several timelines. What you experienced was the end result of a future we failed to protect. In exchange for preserving my existence—and that of Kyouko's and Sayaka's existence—I would sacrifice that particular universe and begin anew in another. Except…whenever we did, so too did Walpurgisnacht. The events that happen in the universe we occupied could have been different, but the outcome was always the same: She turned, transformed into a Witch cultivated of hate and despair, and in her corruption destroyed everything we cherished."_

Madoka exhaled. _"I had pulled you out and was preparing to transfer you somewhere safe, but Walpurgisnacht…your stress from the memory was overpowering. She was hungry and she seized the opportunity."_ She removed her hand and placed it amongst the other in her lap, which was clenched firmly in her fist. _"I had to take the risk. You had to know. You have to, or you will never free them. My best friend…and Walpurgisnacht."_

"But…isn't Walpurgisnacht the enemy?" She shifted into a sitting position, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms round them. The—dream? Vision?—of her Senshi and future husband filling her grave was still as fresh and cloying a damp towel draped on a shelf to dry.

_"She is…and she isn't." _Staring at her hands, rotating them like a crank to open a window, _"It's a long and complicated story, one you will not enjoy, but to get to that point I would—I _must_—start from the very beginning."_

"From the first time around."

_"Yes. From the first time…when we had thought we'd finally found the exit to an imperfect paradise."_

"What do you mean, imperfect paradise?"

A pregnant silence hung in the air, and for awhile Madoka did not speak. Then, as Usagi was about to repeat herself: _"Come with me."_ She rose and offered a hand. Usagi took it and was helped to her feet.

She got her first glimpse at the area she was in. It was not the nightmarish void of floating faces or the rain-swept apocalypse of the ruined city, but quite the opposite. They were standing on a hill with grass as lush and viridian as uncut emerald, interspersed with fall maple and pine trees. Below them the world was open, a strand of white sand beach expanding past the horizon shrouded in mist. The ocean stretched beyond oblivion like the hand of a reposed titan.

Usagi thought it was one of the most beautiful places she had ever beheld, and wondered if Kyouko and Sayaka knew about it.

They were walking along the shore when Madoka spoke. _"Before I begin, I want you to understand that what you are seeing now—_

_what you are going through—is both a dream and a reality. The places you have and will awaken to are outside the scope of human perception, manifesting into physical matter from vague concepts we imagine but can never grasp. Their symbolism can range from abstract to surreal, subtle to explicit, implied and explicated. Some of these…realms…will be formed as much as reason and physics can permit, but I can't guarantee the rules our universe—the universe we live in—will uphold. Its structure depends solely on the individual._

_"I tell you this because, while you're aware of what followed encountering Walpurgisnacht, you don't know _where_ you are."_ Madoka stopped and met her eye to eye. _"You're in a hospital, Usagi, the Crossroads Medical and Emergency Center. You've been in a coma for eleven days, and tonight you almost died."_

"What?" Usagi was stunned. "How? Was it my injuries? I recall taking some damage—"

_"Your wounds had nothing to do with it. As I said before, it was Walpurgisnacht who took advantage while you were vulnerable. Your heart stopped beating for several minutes. We" _her, Kyouko, and Sayaka _"were afraid we wouldn't force her to retreat in time. If it wasn't for us and your doctor's quick thinking…."_ She didn't finish. The implications were very clear.

Usagi's mouth suddenly felt dry and she wished she could find a way to distill the water and drink it. What would have happened if she had passed on? What would become of the Sailor Senshi?

_"It's not just them,"_ said Madoka, who may as well have been reading her mind. _"If you die, so does this universe. You would never marry Mamoru, sire him Chibi-Usa, or continue your mother's legacy with the building of Crystal Tokyo. There will be no peace, no safety, no happiness."_

"Then…they" the apparitions "were telling the truth?" Madoka nodded once. Usagi gazed upon the sea, helpless and afraid. "What am I—" no, not her, there was nothing she could do "What are they going to do? If Walpurgisnacht is as powerful as you say…."

_"Right now my friends are trying to find a way to wake you without alerting her. The spell Kyouko cast upon you has shielded you from Walpurgisnacht's reach, but it is a minor arte and eventually it will wear off. Kyouko will need time to cool and store sufficient mana before she can cast again. Regardless of how things play out, we'll be keeping strict watch—both on you and Walpurgisnacht. We haven't seen the last of her._

_"As for what the Senshi can do, they will be able to fight her forces…but I won't lie, even if they're not Puella Magi it's going to be very tough. One Witch alone will be a challenge, a Nest a gauntlet. They're going to need all the help they can get."_

Usagi bowed her chin acquiescingly. The motion felt dumb, mechanic. One thing, however, made the gears churning her mental factory work ceaselessly: "How do you know all this? How do you know about me, my friends—everything—if we've never met?"

At this Madoka smiled, a smile that conveyed a myriad of emotions like a concoction brewing in a cauldron. Sadness, nostalgia, regret, suffering. Usagi had never seen a girl look so tired and so strong (if only from the inside).

She turned toward the eternal wavering blue. From the horizon a massive cloud of mist rolled in like chargers covering the breadth of a battlefield. Usagi shivered and rubbed her arms as goosebumps prickled her flesh; she glanced at Madoka, who appeared not the slightest bit fazed by the sudden drop in temperature. _"Because we do,"_ she answered, _"but we'll get to that. First and foremost, I want to fill you in on who—_what_—we are and how we got to this point. Time is plenty but time is precious; the more time we have the more information I can relay to you and the better our chances of waking you and putting an end to Walpurgisnacht's terror."_

"To be free and to set free," said Usagi. The nirvana of land and sea was gone, devoured swiftly and suddenly by the hunger of the mist.

_"Indeed."_The world underwent a metamorphosis before their eyes. Earth spread from the soles of their feet and grass poked their bladed heads through the soil. Saplings grew and blossomed into flowers. Trees rose into a clearing sky of bluest azure. Concrete streets and gleaming metal skyscrapers formed the shell of skeletal frames like moss on rock. A burble of automobiles, soaring planes, and incoherent conversation bubbled to a crescendo from an unseen distance.

Usagi listened, breathed in the moment, at a loss for words.

Madoka swept an arm, conveying the vastness, the immensity of the realm. _"My name is Kaname Madoka, and on this day, in the city of Mitakihara, my life was changed forever. On this day I met a beautiful girl who had just transferred to our school. Her name was Akemi Homura…."_


	14. Interlude: Can You See the Light?

**Disclaimer:** All characters and locations belong to their respective owners.

* * *

**Interlude  
****Can You See the Light?**

* * *

She doesn't want to go to sleep. In fact, she hates sleeping – hates it, hates it with every fiber of her being, a strength she never thought to have possessed. But her body craves it, yearns for it. She can't ignore the sand weighing on her eyelids, the poison that slows her movements and dulls her senses to the point of numbness.

She doesn't want to sleep, but she is human. She needs her rest no matter how much she resists.

It's five in the morning. Daylight will soon be breaking.

With great reluctance, she slips under the sheets and within minutes is lost in darkness.

Time may be lost here, but the instant she enters _it_ comes along. Like an aching, eldritch thing from deep within the morass of eternity, _it _takes her and coils her in serpentine amore.

_I missed you,_ it hisses sibilantly. It leans in close, _so close_. Its words send shivers down her spine and she shudders, wracked with heavy, damp cold. _You've been a very busy girl. What have you been doing lately?_

She tries not to shrink into herself, tries not to tear herself from this iron-clad grip.

_Come on. What have you been doing lately? Hm?_ It exhales, and she smells smoke and blood and ozone and blood and tears and despair and _the blood the blood there was so much_ blood.

"I," she grounds forth, slowly and stolidly as she can make it sound, "I've been observing. Everywhere I go…I'm always watching, studying."

_What have you found?_

"There are…some places I have in mind, suitable for our purposes. I'll show them to you…unless…you need more time to...?"

_Dearie, I can take on _anything_. I'm not afraid and you,_ it pulls her in, tightens its hold like a constrictor, _you shouldn't be, either._ It presses against the slope of her neck, and she can _taste_ the smile, feel it gnawing heartstrings taut as piano chords. _I believe in you, you know that? I really, _really _do._

She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants to run away and never look back.

…She wants to die, sleep the dreamless sleep all people will eventually be called to do.

_Can't letcha do that, honey; there's much more that needs ta be done, yeah. I can't continue if you croak on me._

"The world would be better off if we were gone," she whimpers. "The universe would be better off if there were no more Incubators—"

_Oh, I couldn't agree MORE,_ it snarls, curling protectively around its charge (she tries not to shiver). _If it weren't for those brown-nosing rats, we'd have the energy all to _ourselves_. Who can say the world will end in fire? Who can say the world will end in ice? This…THING…they call entropy? Bah! A possibility it may be, but we've seen the end haven't we? The world won't end in fire or ice or thermodynamic shutdown. No; it will end in the enslavement of the human race! Our survival demands it!_

"I shouldn't be alive…_You_ shouldn't be alive." She sniffs, and like a dam breaking under pressure the tears begin to flow. "I destroyed you – I alone – when none were able! I rid the world of your presence!" She grinds her teeth. "I did it all for her…."

A rumbling chuckle. _So you say._

"I did. I did it for her. No one else. I have no regrets."

_That's right. You have all the power you can imagine in your hands. You wouldn't be the same girl today had you not come to me._

"I never _came_ to you. I...I had no choice. For Madoka…for everyone…."

_Lies,_ it hisses. _You care only for yourself, rely only on yourself. Your _friends_ are just a means to an end. That's why—_

"No…."

_THAT'S WHY—!_

"It's not true! IT'S NOT TRUE!" She fights to escape, pushes and shoves and claws and pulls. "_God Almighty, it's not true!_"

The thing grins. _God? Little girl, _WE ARE GOD_, and soon this world…this universe…will be ours for the taking._

In the absolute dark, a hidden hand takes her by the chin and motions her to face the gaping maw of the abyss.

* * *

_You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?_

* * *

_"There's something that's been bothering me,"_ Sayaka says as she observes her companion in meditation.

Kyouko opens an eye, and the iris staring back at her is blank and unfocused. _"What's that?"_

_"The Rossa Fantasma...how did you manage to manipulate it like that?"_ She indicates the glowing red portals that are spread before her companion in a semi-circle. _"I thought it had something to do with illusions."_

_"It does, but with the state we're in I can do much more that I couldn't before. This place here…it's absolutely overflowing with energy. You don't even have to expand your mind to sense it; it sticks to you like static cling on fabric."_ She taps the center of her forehead. _"Illusions are distortions of reality. Illusions make the brain assume it's seeing something when it really isn't. And perception can sometimes override the other senses._

_"In the old days I used Rossa Fantasma on people. I could make them do anything as long as I maintained control. However, in the past couple resets, there was one thought that always kept coming back to me."_ She opens her other eye, and in this one it is bright, clear, and alert. _"What if I could trick myself?"_

_"No one can do that,"_ Sayaka grunts. _"Even if you repeat a lie to yourself a thousand times, it won't work. If you repeat that lie to somebody else, then yes that person will eventually come to believe the lie to be the truth."_

_"It's the same with casting Rossa Fantasma on myself; I know how it works, therefore it won't have any effect on me." _Her eyes closed. _"However, the solution is very simple: I need only the spell, a reflective surface, and a suggestion to project onto the surface."_

_"It still won't work."_

_"You don't remember our fights, do you? I can construct my image on an illusion and weave so many layers I can place on it you would think it was real. I can swap places with it and you wouldn't notice til the last second. But yes, that's what I do: I conjure the projection, have it cast a suggestion on the reflective surface, and dispel the projection. The information it gathers upon dispelling will return to me."_

_"And that's how you're able to distort the space around us."_ Sayaka gives the gateways an appraising glance. _"You figure this out all on your own? I'm impressed."_

_"What you lack in strength you make up for it with brainpower."_ She lifts a hand and reaches out toward the gateway before her. _"The Sailor Senshi are all we have left. If they fail, there won't be another retry. Everything we've been doing up to this point will be for naught."_

They don't speak after that. Sayaka contents herself to watching Kyouko breaching the spaces in between reality, combing the nether for the data they required to advance their plans into motion. Now and then she will open her eyes, reveal the glossy film of her entranced state or the brightness of an errant iris.

They aren't sure when the Witch will strike again. They cannot so much as predict how she will attack.

Always be on your guard. Never let your guard drop, not even when you think her presence is nonexistent. Don't slack off, for there is never time to rest.

Rest. Sayaka wishes she could rest. She's tired.

They're all tired.

(But that day has not yet come.)

_"I can't wait for it,"_ she says aloud, lying back against her palms, staring up at the unmoving stellar sky.

_"Hrm,"_ Kyouko agrees, too deep in her meditation to communicate further. From the portal she extracts her arm, revealing a tangled, stringy mass of limp, ethereal energy. An eye squints open, and through the haze she can images, moments captured in time, tiny characters moving in a tiny space of a tiny environment.

Maybe, just maybe, the answers lie within—

_You shouldn't have done that._

The blood in their veins grow deathly chill.

Kyouko's eyes snap to wakefulness, and she sees—

_"Sayaka, behind you!"_ But she's too late; it takes a second for the realization to dawn, and in the next a black tentacle pierces the girl's chest. The tip ripples and morphs into a four-pronged hook. _"Sayaka!"_

_C-o-m-e…_

_P-l-a-y…_

_W-i-t-h…_

_M-e…._

The stunned look on her face, of numb confusion, has never been more real. _"What…?"_

There's a sickening, meaty _CRACK_.

Something hot and wet splashes across Kyouko's face.

And Sayaka howls. A dark aura rises from the floor and, like the jaws of a dread, eldritch beast, swallows her whole.

* * *

She runs as though she has never run before, as though her feet have caught aflame and she cannot put them out, but yet she presses onwards. She leaps through the spaces in between spaces, blazing through realms like a comet's sputtering tail.

_"Madoka! Madoka!"_

The planes shift, fold in upon themselves. A vast, sprawling desert baking under a sweltering sun; an ocean of ice dominated by a clear sky buzzing with flocks of screeching, winged fish; a lonely rural village basked in the light of alien moons.

She doesn't stop. She refuses to stop.

_"MADOKA!"_

Suddenly, she's in Mitakihara, and for a second she almost careens to a halt in the middle of the street. They're packed with cars hoping to beat the evening rush, pedestrians crowding the sidewalks as they comingle and while the day away, the far-off notes of airliners set on their destinations.

She shouldn't be here. She can't be, because…

Because in that moment she remembers this isn't Mitakihara, and she quickens her pace when she catches sight of them up ahead. _"Madoka!"_

_"Kyouko?"_ Madoka asks, surprised. _"What's wrong?"_

_"It's Sayaka! She's…."_

"What's happened to Sayaka?" Usagi asks. "Is she okay?"

_"I wouldn't be here if she were!"_ the other girl pants. She straightens up, takes a moment to collect her breath, and turns to her fellow magi. _"Madoka…."_

She nods somberly. _"I know. Usagi, I'm sorry, but I need you to go back to sleep."_

Usagi clenches the hands at her sides into fists. "I want to help, I really do…but I'll only get in the way. Just…be careful, okay? Even if she's a Witch, Sayaka's still Sayaka. She can be brought back, just like you said."

_"Walpurgisnacht works in many ways,"_ Kyouko says quietly, features sobering. _"There's the possibility we won't revert her to normal form, and if that happens—"_

_"It won't,"_ says Madoka. _"I won't allow Sayaka to be lost to the darkness…and regardless of what you say or feel you will do the same. Because she's our friend and because,"_ she pauses, puts her fingertips to Usagi's head, and in her eyes both girls peer into depths of endless red, depths that contained the red of blood spilled and histories mired, _"because there's always hope."_

There always is, Usagi wants to say, but the words are never spoken.

They needn't be.

* * *

When the aura recedes, the last plate of iron slides into place.

_"Now…let's raise some hell, yeah?"_

Oktavia von Seckondorff snarls as the space around it warps and shifts. It grips its swords, turning its head as the first of the prey materializes into being.

It is red. Red hair, red clothes, _red red SO MUCH RED—_

_"Sayaka,"_ it says.

The word doesn't register, doesn't bear any semblance.

It is mad, it is confused, and it is hungry.

Oktavia bellows to a heaven that isn't there.

* * *

"Madoka? Whatever happens…we'll always be together…won't we? Even if…one of us should turn…we're still friends…right?"

"Of course we will. Whether or not we like it, the choice we made was our own. We have to live with it…but that's not such a bad thing. That's what life's all about: struggling to make ends meet, struggling to preserve and live to see another day."

"Are you afraid?"

"I am…but with you by my side…I can do anything. _We_ can do anything."

"Madoka…."

"It's okay. We're here for you." She takes her hand, "Count on it," and smiles.

* * *

Mami never could forget that smile.


End file.
